In Indianapolis, married couple Rod Coons and Florence Peace are satisfied with their current health insurance coverage:
I’d prefer to stay with our current plan because it meets our needs.
Unfortunately, that’s not possible—because Obamacare’s government bureaucrats are forcing Coons and Peace off their health plan. As Kaiser Health News notes this morning, this couple’s current insurance won’t qualify as “government-approved” coverage under Obamacare, meaning they will have to find different coverage.
Coons knows that his current plan has a $10,000 deductible—and he’s comfortable with that fact. He says, “I’m only really interested in catastrophic coverage” in the event of a medical emergency like a heart attack. But Washington bureaucrats who think they know better will force him to change health insurance plans to meet Obamacare’s mandate to purchase insurance.
Sadly, many Americans find themselves in the same position. Kaiser Health News reports on the widespread outrage one online broker received when telling clients that their insurance does not meet Obamacare’s standards:
When online health insurance vendor ehealthinsurance.com began notifying people in non-grandfathered plans that they would have to change policies next January, they got so many calls that they shut down the planned week-long email campaign after one day. “The people that received the email were not happy at all,” says Carrie McLean, the website’s director of customer care. “They said, ‘What are you talking about? I thought I was already on an [Obamacare] plan.'”
And while Obamacare’s supporters claim the law will reduce costs, the additional mandated benefits included in the new “government-approved” insurance policies will actually raise overall health spending. The Congressional Budget Office concluded that for individuals buying health insurance on their own, the law’s mandates would lead to an “induced increase” in health spending, due to an “increase in enrollees’ use of medical care resulting from lower cost-sharing.” In other words, by increasing subsidies for health care, Obamacare will raise—not lower—both insurance premiums and overall health spending.
Meanwhile, Rod Coons is left to ponder what will happen when he loses his existing health coverage:
I’m happy with where I’m at right now, but it doesn’t look like that’s where I’m going to be at in the future.
Many Americans share his concerns about the future of their health coverage. It’s why Congress should refuse to spend a single dime implementing Obamacare.
