During the official GOP response to this years State of the Union Address Congresswoman Cathy McMorris-Rodger made the following claim.
"Not long ago I got a letter from Bette in Spokane, who hoped the President’s health care law would save her money – but found out instead that her premiums were going up nearly $700 a month. No, we shouldn’t go back to the way things were, but this law is not working."
As our own
databob has sussed out, this is simply not the case, and now even some more mainstream news outlets have noticed, including
Talking Points Memo.
Here's what happened. Grenier was paying $552 per month for a catastrophic, bare-bones plan that was (like many others) canceled because it didn't meet Obamacare's minimum benefits standard. A replacement plan cost $1,200 per month -- hence the "nearly $700" hike. But that happened to be one of the more expensive policies, and a cheaper one was available for $1,052 per month. In addition, the 58-year-old Grenier admitted to the Spokesman-Review that she could probably have lowered that figure by $100 if she bought from the state-based Obamacare exchange, but she didn't want to do that.
"I wouldn't go on that Obama website at all," Grenier told the paper. "We liked our old plan. It worked for us, but they can’t offer it anymore."
So ObamaCare didn't raise her premiums by $700 - her insurance company tried to
trick her into a more expensive plan the same way they tried and got caught doing so in
Kentucky and
California. Here we have a case where ignorance is not exactly "bliss'.
in Kentucky the insurance co Humana was fined $65,000 for sending out letters very similar to the one received by Mrs. Grenier.
http://www.courier-journal.com/...
The Kentucky Department of Insurance has fined Humana $65,430 because it offered policyholders an unapproved opportunity to amend their insurance as part of a letter that regulators have called “misleading.”
The department investigated letters sent in August to 6,543 individual plan policyholders in Kentucky. The letters said they needed to renew their plans for 2014 within 30 days or choose a more expensive option that complies with the Affordable Care Act.
But regulators last month called the letters misleading, arguing they did not make sufficiently clear that policyholders could compare and choose competing plans on the state’s health insurance exchanges, which open on Oct. 1, and for which they could be eligible for federal subsidies.
It's also very much like similar letters that were sent out in Washington state by Lifewise.
Donna received the letter canceling her insurance plan on Sept. 16. Her insurance company, LifeWise of Washington, told her that they'd identified a new plan for her. If she did nothing, she'd be covered. A 56-year-old Seattle resident with a 57-year-old husband and 15-year-old daughter, Donna had been looking forward to the savings that the Affordable Care Act had to offer.
But that's not what she found. Instead, she'd be paying an additional $300 a month for coverage. The letter made no mention of the health insurance marketplace that would soon open in Washington, where she could shop for competitive plans, and only an oblique reference to financial help that she might qualify for, if she made the effort to call and find out. Otherwise, she'd be automatically rolled over to a new plan -- and, as the letter said, "If you're happy with this plan, do nothing."
If Donna had done nothing, she would have ended up spending about $1,000 more a month for insurance than she will now that she went to the marketplace, picked the best plan for her family and accessed tax credits at the heart of the health care reform law.
This isn't something that the ACA wrought. In fact it was designed to prevent this very occurrence when this very section was included.
SEC. 1251 ø42 U.S.C. 18011¿. PRESERVATION OF RIGHT TO MAINTAIN
EXISTING COVERAGE.
(a) NO CHANGES TO EXISTING COVERAGE.—
(1) IN GENERAL.—Nothing in this Act (or an amendment made by this Act) shall be construed to require that an individual terminate coverage under a group health plan or health insurance coverage in which such individual was enrolled on the date of enactment of this Act.
It is simply
not the case that the ACA put onerous and expensive requirements on existing plans in 2014 that would have greatly increased premium requirements.
The fact is that plans like Mrs Grenier's which should have been protected by the above section of the law and grandfathered plans do not have to provide Free Preventive Care which is the most "expensive" of the new ACA requirements.
https://www.healthcare.gov/...
That's right, plans that existed in 2010 when the law was passed and signed do NOT have to provide free cancer screenings or for that matter - free contraception coverage. They don't have to cover you if you have a pre-existing condition and they can continue to implement yearly spending limits on your care.
Also they would have already been required to cover adult children up to age 26 since that was phased into all plans in 2010. The fact is that what changed in 2014 is that they were banned from lifetime limits on coverage, arbitrary cancellations and had to provide that at least 80% of premiums go toward paying for your care.
That's it. That's all that a grandfathered plan has to do to remain "ACA Compliant". But instead of doing that, her insurance company - like so many others - choose to cancel that plan and offer her a set of more expensive ones to do nothing more than line their own pockets.
if Mrs Grenier had bothered to look at the plans available to her and her husband on the Washingotn Exchange, if their total household income is around $50,000 they would have qualified for subsidies and been able to get a plan for as little as $52.71/Month with a $6000 Deductible ($4,000 less than the deductible with their old plan).
If their household income is $70,000 and they did not qualify for subsidies their lowest premium option would still be only $746.84, with a $6000 deductible.
So the worst case scenario here
if she had bothered to look at her state exchagne would be a $190 premium increase with a $4000 reduction in deductible, that is significantly different from the claimed $700 increase. In fact, $700, wasn't the even the most expensive alternative plan that her insurance company offered her.
Via the Spokesman.
An earlier version of this story described the $1,200 replacement plan as the priciest option, but Grenier contacted the newspaper after the article was published to say she had looked over her paperwork again and wanted to point out that there was an even more expensive plan offered by her carrier, which would have been $1,679 per month, she said.
This was a trick that her insurance company tried to play on her, and she
fell for it simply because
she is ideologically stubborn and has now made the choice to go without care and pay the tax penalty rather than access the exchange and get better coverage at a decent price.
That frankly is very sad, but I'm afraid Mrs Grenier is far from alone in the Dead-ender thinking. Many more people are putting themselves in a difficult and painful position just to make a ideological point of making sure that insurance companies can continue to get the best of them without "government interference".
Vyan
5:23 PM PT: The DCCC is now calling Rep McMorris-Rodgers out for Lying to the American People. Good to see them showing some spine in defending ObamaCare, finally.
http://blogs.rollcall.com/...
McMorris Rodgers described Bette as someone “who hoped the president’s health care law would save her money — but found out instead that her premiums were going up nearly $700 a month.”
Actually, Bette Grenier, 58, was never forced to pay a higher premium, according to an interview with the Spokane Spokesman-Review. In fact, she knew there were other, less-expensive health care options being offered through the exchanges on HealthCare.gov, but she wasn’t interested pursuing them.
“Congresswoman McMorris Rodgers owes the nation an apology for lying in her Republican response to the State of the Union this week and spreading more misinformation to Americans about their health care options,” Emily Bittner, a DCCC spokeswoman, said Friday. “Congresswoman McMorris Rodgers and House Republicans are so desperate to please their insurance company contributors and send Americans back to the days when insurance companies had free rein that they are now resorting to embellishing stories and leaving out the facts to mislead Americans about the new affordable, comprehensive coverage available to them.”
10:40 PM PT: LA Times from yesterday "Another Bogs Obamacare Story: the GOP's Bette"
Grenier told the newspaper that she wrote Rodgers after her insurance company informed her that her $552-a-month catastrophic health plan would not be offered in 2014. It offered her an alternative plan complying with the ACA at $1,052 a month.
But that sounds like her insurer trying to steer her to an overpriced option. A compliant plan meeting the Affordable Care Act's coverage mandates actually is available from Washington's insurance exchange for much less -- and with a deductible far lower than the $10,000 she was paying under the old plan and broader coverage, though lacking a provision for four free doctor visits a year provided by her old plan.
...
Instead, she and her husband "have decided to go without coverage," the newspaper reported.
Does this make sense? Grenier deliberately decided to forgo the options available to her and her family from the Affordable Care Act, despite the knowledge that they might be more suitable for her than her old insurance or the plan being hawked by her insurer -- she says a friend of hers found a plan for a mere $129 a month.
But her plight has nothing to do with Obamacare. It's a product of her own apparently flawed decision to refuse even to look into the benefits the healthcare law might provide