In Short: Obama Lied. My Health Plan Died.

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obama-health-careBy Michelle Malkin

Like some 22 million other Americans, I’m a self-employed small-business owner who buys health insurance for my family directly on the individual market. We have a high-deductible PPO plan that allows us to choose from a wide range of doctors.

Or rather, we had such a plan.

Last week, our family received notice from Anthem BlueCross BlueShield of Colorado that we can no longer keep the plan we like because of “changes from health-care reform (also called the Affordable Care Act or ACA).” The letter informed us that “to meet the requirements of the new laws, your current plan can no longer be continued beyond your 2014 renewal date.”

In short: Obama lied. My health plan died.

Remember? Our president looked America straight in the eye and promised: “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health-care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.”

This isn’t just partisan business. It’s personal.

Our cancellation letter says Anthem is “not going to be selling new individual PPO plans.” When we asked whether we could keep our children’s doctors, an agent for Anthem told my husband and me she didn’t know.

The insurer has no details available yet on what exactly they’ll be offering. We either will be herded into the ObamaCare exchange (launching Oct. 1), a severely limited HMO plan or presented with costlier alternatives from another insurer. If they even exist.

We’re not alone. Across the country, insurers are sending out ObamaCare-induced health-plan death notices to untold tens of thousands of other customers in the individual market.

Few among Washington’s protected political class are paying attention, because they’re exempted from ObamaCare’s destructive consequences. But Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) also lost his individual-market plan. Unlike most politicians on Capitol Hill, he chose not to enroll in the federal health-insurance program. He told me that he opted to participate in the private market “because I wanted to be in the same boat as my constituents. And now that boat is sinking!”

Gardner points to recent analysis showing individual-market rate increases of 23 percent to 25 percent in Colorado. “After my current plan is discontinued,” he wrote last week, “the closest comparable plan through our current provider will cost over 100 percent more, going from roughly $650 a month to $1,480 per month.”

He now carries his ObamaCare cancellation notice with him as hardcore proof of the Democrats’ ultimate deception.

The National Association for the Self-Employed is recommending that its small-business owners and freelancers plan for at least a 15 percent hike nationwide.

One reason for those rate hikes, of course, is that ObamaCare’s mandated-benefits provisions force insurers to carry coverage for items that individual-market consumers had deliberately chosen to forgo.

Americans who had opted for affordable catastrophic coverage-style plans now have fewer and fewer choices. This includes a whole class of musicians, photographers, artists, writers, actors and other creative people who bought health plans through the individual market or via small professional groups.

As St. Vincent College arts professor Ben Schachter reports in The Weekly Standard, groups like the College Art Association, Modern Language Association and the Entertainment Industry Group Insurance Trust are dropping their plans. Young, healthy members of these groups “are far more likely to see their rates go up – or to face the individual mandate penalties.”

Thanks to Obama, access is down. Premiums and health-care spending are up. Research and development on lifesaving drugs and medical devices are down. Hours and benefits have been cut because of ObamaCare costs and regulatory burdens by at least 300 American companies, according to Investor’s Business Daily. And the ObamaCare layoff bomb continues to claim victims.

For hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of self-employed job creators, three fundamental Obama­Care truths are becoming as clear as Obama’s growing nose: 1) You can’t keep it. 2) We’re in trouble. 3) The do-gooders don’t care.

Michelle Malkin

{Matzav.com Newscenter}


12 COMMENTS

  1. It’s really scary! When Pelosi looked away from the cameras and said, “You have to vote for the bill so that we could can see what’s in it!” I knew we were in trouble! We ARE in trouble! Nothing can stop it unless we, the voters, teach the elected officials who they work for! As it stands now we work for them – we became the servants, yet they’re called Public Servants! We need to rebell. We must! Soon we will all get the letters this author got!

  2. That’s right, all our rights & freedoms will be taken away one by one, from metziza b’peh to sugary drinks etc… & soon we will not be able to live as free yidden R”L.

    there is only one way to save yourself now, GO TO ERETZ YISROEL & save yourself before its too late, there are many programs to assist anyone that makes aliya,-from the minute you get off the plane with nefesh b’nefesh all the way down to housing & wic etc…-sorry but if you think i’m breslev or a Zionist your making a big mistake. trust me for your sake & save yourself before its too late, many people before WWII stayed in Germany for many reasons (values or family or too comfortable there etc…) & look what happened cause they didn’t listen to the gedolim who said flee to Israel or the USA.

    May we all be in Yerushalyim ASAP with mashiach

  3. Same problem with my health insurance. Only instead of at least running the course of the contract, they’re terminating it as of the end of December. It’s going to cost us a lot more money. Stupid democrats.

  4. Once again I say: cry me a river. Yudel (@ comment no. 4) is one of the few who “gets it!” The Ribbono Shel Olam is sending messages all over the place (hurricane Sandy, which forced thousands of Jews to flee from their destroyed homes, being the most powerful one) that IT’S TIME FOR YIREI SHOMAYIM TO LEAVE GOLUS AMERICA!!! But of course, Klal Yisrael is a stiff-necked people, who once again are clinging to chutz l’Aretz as if their lives depended on their staying put.

    But of course, the truth is exactly the opposite. As the non-Torah Jews disappear into the “darkness” of the American golus (through rampant assimilation and intermarriage, vis. the recent Pew Report), the supposed bnei Torah — who should know better the importance of yishuv ha’Aretz in our mesorah — better get out while the getting’s good. If you keep spurning Eretz Yisrael, I fear that the Ribbono Shel Olam will become so disgusted that he’ll decide that if so many frum Jews love America so much, he’ll keep you in your chosen golus forever. Worrying about your health insurance will be the LEAST of your problems!

  5. “ObamaCare’s mandated-benefits provisions force insurers to carry coverage for items that individual-market consumers had deliberately chosen to forgo.”

    And that is one reason why individual market insurance has been so expensive, with typical policies costing so much. Many Americans had to put their families at risk because decent coverage was not affordable at any price.

    And Malkin doesn’t seem to care about the tens of millions of Americans for whom NO coverage is available. She will have a better policy under Obamacare that she had, and those Americans will pre-existing conditions will now be able to get coverage.

  6. #4 – Yudel:
    “trust me for your sake & save yourself before its too late, many people before WWII stayed in Germany for many reasons… & look what happened cause they didn’t listen to the gedolim…”
    Get off your high horse.
    You’re no Gadol nor do you speak for a Gadol.

  7. Why isn’t anyone concerned that Obama’s political backers such as Bill Ayers had said on countless interviews(look at you tube)
    That the goal of their marxist Socialist movement is to take control of the healthcare of America and then exterminate people who don’t agree with their ideology and place the people in detention (concentration Camps)
    Yidden WAKE UP!!!! ITS HAPPENING AGAIN…HISTORY IS REPEATING.

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