Report: 52 Million Americans Have Lost Or Will Lose Health Insurance

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no-health-careEven as President Barack Obama sold a new health care law in part by assuring Americans they would be able to keep their insurance plans, his administration knew that tens of millions of people actually could lose those their policies.

“If you like your private health insurance plan, you can keep your plan. Period,” Obama said as he pitched the plan, the unqualified promise he made repeatedly.

Yet advisers did say in 2010 that there were large caveats and that anyone whose insurance plan changed would lose the promised protection of being able to keep existing plans. And a report in 2010 said that as many as 69 percent of certain employer-based insurance plans would lose that protection, meaning as many as 41 million people could lose their plans even if they wanted to keep them and would be forced into other plans. Another 11 million who bought their own insurance also could lose their plans. Combined, as many as 52 million Americans could lose or have lost old insurance plans.

Some or much of that loss of favored insurance is driven by normal year-to-year changes such as employers changing plans to save money. And many people could end up with better plans. But it is not what the president pledged.

Caught in the firestorm of his broken promise, Obama on Thursday apologized.

“I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me,” he told NBC News Thursday evening. “We’ve got to work hard to make sure that they know we hear them and we are going to do everything we can to deal with folks who find themselves in a tough position as a consequence of this.”

The shifting narrative started as Obama worked to sell the entire health care overhaul to a skeptical nation and Congress. To win support from those who already had insurance, he made the promise that no one who liked their plan would lose it. The key was that millions of plans would be “grandfathered” in the new law, thus protected from any new requirements.

Yet as insurance companies started notifying hundreds of thousands this fall that their current policies were being canceled in preparation for new ones, it became clear that many were not guaranteed to keep their plans.

The White House and Congress have focused on cancelations of plans in the individual market, where people buy their own policies.

Obama insisted anew Thursday that the problem is limited to people who buy their own insurance. “We’re talking about 5 percent of the population who are in what’s called the individual market. They’re out there buying health insurance on their own,” he told NBC.

But a closer examination finds that the number of people who have plans changing, or have already changed, could be between 34 million to 52 million. That’s because many employer-provided insurance plans also could change, not just individually purchased insurance plans

Administration officials decline to say how many employer-sponsored plans could change. But those numbers could be between 23 million to 41 million, based on a McClatchy analysis of estimates offered by the Department of Health and Human Services in June 2010.

Read more at MCCLATCHY DC.

{Matzav.com Newscenter}


5 COMMENTS

  1. Why is there no talk about the fact that people are paying close to twice as much on their premiums today ! We are being squeeeeezed!

  2. “Apology” not accepted. Obama’s lawyerly lingo makes it sound like an “apology” wshen it really is not.

    Is his “apology” going to change anything? That entire 5% thing is a big lie, anyway!

    If Obama would not have started to “patchkeh” with our health insurance in the first place, millions of our fellow citizens would not be having all these problems!

  3. ps you can not keep your doctor even if you like them. as part of rationed care they are not signing up alot of doctors – so there is longer wait times till you see the doctor.
    pure evil, greed and profits. theivery actually

  4. there is more hope for a fool then for Obama to get help or give help.

    YOU are going down the drain just like the rest of this country & i’m watching it happen step by step.

    the only way to save yourself is to flee this collapsing country & head to Israel before its too late. How many fled Germany when they were told to? & look what happened to them R”L don’t let your lives be destroyed by this collapsing country & save yourself ASAP

    Hatzlacha to everyone-you’ll need it alot

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