Tuesday, March 04, 2014

That train(wreck) has left the station [UPDATED: Clarification]

Unbelievable:

"...the White House will announce a new directive allowing insurers to continue offering health plans that do not meet ObamaCare’s minimum coverage requirements."

Really?

Here's a news flash:

"...even if carriers wanted to sell these plans, they still have to price and file them with the 58 states' departments of insurance, and then feed these rates into their quoting engines"

That's right: the only non-ACA-compliant plans that are left are those that have been grandfathered. And adding insult to injury, grandfathered plans cannot be changed; that is, no deductible changes, no adding or dropping benefits, period. I just looked again, and there are no non-ACA-compliant plans available on or off the Exchange.

Now, some might point to "mini-med" and short term plans as examples of non-ACA-compliant polices, but these were never considered true major medical plans in the first place.

Smoke and mirrors.

UPDATE/Clarification: In re-reading this story (as well as a few others), it appears that this applies to those who went the "early renewal" route in order to stave off the cancellation of their pre-ACA plans for a year. The "relief" is that, under this new regime, those who had in fact renewed early may be able to keep their pre-ACA plans an additional year.

No word yet on whether or not any changes to these policies will be allowed (as they are disallowed on grandfathered plans).


Oh, and let;s not forget that, just a few short months ago, these plans were all characterized as "sub-standard."
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