printOnce they are shoved into Obama-care “exchanges”—and they will be—the policy holders expunged from the individual health-care market will often qualify for taxpayer subsidies.
The New Republic prefers “federal subsidies” to “taxpayer subsidies.”
Semantics can help conceal who will help fund insurance for individuals who had it, paid for it in full, and were happy with both policy and price.
Meanwhile, the brainiac who brought us all this, and who was incapable of foreseeing the consequences of the law, is “brainstorming with insurers.”
The Politico title doesn’t jibe with the substance of the article, in which the president is back to preaching the benefits of Obamacare.
The latest, via McClatchy:
On Thursday, Obama announced that he’d allow – but not require – insurance companies to extend existing policies for a year as long as they notified customers that their benefits might be diminished with their current plans and that alternative policies might be available to them.
Insurance companies already have devised plans for next year, received the necessary approval from states and begun to sell policies. They aren’t required to continue to offer their existing policies and state insurance commissioners aren’t required to approve those 2013 plans.
“Changing the rules after health plans have already met the requirements of the law could destabilize the market and result in higher premiums for consumers,” Karen Ignagni, the president and CEO of America’s Health Insurance Plans, which represents the industry.
Washington state’s insurance commissioner, Mike Kreidler, announced Thursday he won’t allow insurers to extend their policies, saying Washington’s state-based exchange was “up and running and successfully enrolling thousands of consumers.”