Yesterday ProPublica carried a story under the headline Loyal Obama Supporters, Canceled by Obamacare that told a familiar story. Somebody, happy with their healthcare insurance policy, found that they couldn't keep it, contrary to Obama's promise — a promise that he punctuated with the word, "Period."
Hammack recalled his reaction when he and his wife received a letters from Kaiser in September informing him their coverage was being canceled. “I work downstairs and my wife had a clear look of shock on her face,” he said. “Our first reaction was clearly there’s got to be some mistake. This was before the exchanges opened up. We quickly calmed down. We were confident that this would all be straightened out. But it wasn’t.”
...
This plan was ending, Kaiser’s letters told them, because it did not meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act. “Everything is taken care of,” the letters said. “There’s nothing you need to do.”
The letters said the couple would be enrolled in new Kaiser plans that would cost nearly $1,300 a month for the two of them (more than $15,000 a year).
Lee Hammack and his wife JoEllen Brothers may be shocked and disappointed, but they can find consolation in their rescue from a bad-apple insurance company — Kaiser Permanente.
“Remember, before the Affordable Care Act, these bad-apple insurers had free rein every single year to limit the care that you received, or use minor preexisting conditions to jack up your premiums or bill you into bankruptcy. So a lot of people thought they were buying coverage, and it turned out not to be so good.”
The new Kaiser policy will cost Hammack and Brothers more than twice as much as the one they had, but the couple believe they can adapt. If Hammack can reduce his income to under about $62,000, which for a family of two would four times the federal poverty level, he can qualify for subsidies that could reduce his premiums to zero. He’s giving it serious consideration. He can take a lower salary or contibute more to his retirement account.
In spite of all that Hammack and his wife keep faith in Obama and ObamaCare.
“We’re not changing our views because of this situation, but it hurt to hear Obama saying, just the other day, that if our plan has been dropped it’s because it wasn’t any good, and our costs would go up only slightly,” he said. “We’re gratified that the press is on the case, but frustrated that the stewards of the ACA don’t seem to have heard.”
They may have bought into Obama's lies: First that they could keep their insurance, "Period," and second that what he had always said was they could keep their coverage if the policy didn't change. Or they might think being lied to is fine when the cause is Obama's idea of social justice.
ProPublica doesn't say if either Hammack or Brothers have given any thought to what other conclusions might be drawn from their plan to reduce income and qualify for subsidies. Theirs is only a small drain on the treasury, the reduced tax revenue as a direct result of the couple's lower taxable income along with the higher spending for this brand new insurance premium subsidy.
As we all know, a financial hit on the treasury is never a problem for progressives like Hammack and Brothers, or for ProPublica either. There is no spending problem, according to enlightened folks such as they, only a revenue problem that will be solved when those greedy bad-apple insurance executives and employees can be made to pay their fair share in taxes.
Oh, and by the way, what becomes of the employees of those bad-apple insurance outfits like Kaiser? The ones who support the individual market that ObamaCare was designed to eliminate? No problem. Time Magazine assures them that ObamaCare is having no impact whatever on jobs. Never mind that actual company surveys say quite the opposite.
More Workers Will See Their Hours Cut: “Some employers will minimize the number of newly eligible employees by cutting back on hours for at least a portion of their workforce – 11% of all large employers say they will do so.”
Progressives see no connection between our continued feeble economic growth and the regulatory burdens imposed by Obama and ObamaCare. In reality our slow growth has a negative impact on tax revenue and all this new spending is going to pile up the debt, But I can see it now. Any attempts to even slow down the spending increases, never mind cut into the debt, will have Hammack and Brothers villifying the Republicans for threatenting their health care subsidy. That would be the one they would never have needed had it not been for ObamaCare.
Comments