For some reason, the folks in Capital City think that if they just throw enough money at a (self-created) problem, it will go away. Case in point: the "You can't really keep your insurance" problem.
The carriers have already made it clear that there's only so much they can do (and that turns out to be not much of anything). For example, Anthem has extended its deadline for "early renewals" to the middle of this month, and Medical Mutual has followed suit.
Interestingly, Medical Mutual included this little caveat in its email:
"Medical Mutual is not able to extend individual plans that do not comply with the Affordable Care Act (ACA) into the New Year, because they have no plans or rates approved by the Ohio Department of Insurance (ODI) for these products in 2014"
Which is precisely the problem we delineated here weeks ago. Sheesh.
But do you think that little things like facts will get in the way of the Obamastration?
Oh, right:
"The White House is offering more money to insurance companies as an incentive for them to let people keep insurance policies that were to have been canceled next year ... the administration acknowledged that insurers had a valid concern"
And then went on to get even that wrong.
Color me unsurprised.
And by the way: if you're one of the "lucky" ones who did manage to create an account and actually sign up for a shiny new ObamaTax-compliant plan, you may have noticed something missing:
"This is because the so-called back end essentially doesn’t exist. That’s the part of the site that talks to the insurance companies, processes payments, and actually, you know, gets people enrolled on insurance plans."
Here's the punchline: the rocket surgeons at CMS have said they'll just take the insurance companies' word for it, and cut a check for the guesstimated premiums.
What could possibly go wrong with that?
The carriers have already made it clear that there's only so much they can do (and that turns out to be not much of anything). For example, Anthem has extended its deadline for "early renewals" to the middle of this month, and Medical Mutual has followed suit.
Interestingly, Medical Mutual included this little caveat in its email:
"Medical Mutual is not able to extend individual plans that do not comply with the Affordable Care Act (ACA) into the New Year, because they have no plans or rates approved by the Ohio Department of Insurance (ODI) for these products in 2014"
Which is precisely the problem we delineated here weeks ago. Sheesh.
But do you think that little things like facts will get in the way of the Obamastration?
Oh, right:
"The White House is offering more money to insurance companies as an incentive for them to let people keep insurance policies that were to have been canceled next year ... the administration acknowledged that insurers had a valid concern"
And then went on to get even that wrong.
Color me unsurprised.
And by the way: if you're one of the "lucky" ones who did manage to create an account and actually sign up for a shiny new ObamaTax-compliant plan, you may have noticed something missing:
"This is because the so-called back end essentially doesn’t exist. That’s the part of the site that talks to the insurance companies, processes payments, and actually, you know, gets people enrolled on insurance plans."
Here's the punchline: the rocket surgeons at CMS have said they'll just take the insurance companies' word for it, and cut a check for the guesstimated premiums.
What could possibly go wrong with that?
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