In a televised speech, insurers were allowed to offer their current plans for an additional year.
President Obama has now announced a fix for the widespread problems regarding cancelled health insurance plans, as the date for the full implementation of the healthcare reforms draws ever closer.
This gives the insurers the chance to maintain their current plans for a year, even if they don’t comply with the law.
The fix was announced by the president in order to help to stop the tremendous trend that health insurance companies have started of cancelling plans that aren’t in compliance with the Affordable Care Act’s requirements. This Thursday afternoon address from President Obama gave insurers and consumers another year in which to prepare for the elimination of plans that don’t meet the minimum standards of the new law.
This deal was not meant to be a full health insurance solution but to assist the country in the transition.
Though there were many who objected to this announcement in Obama’s address, with arguments ranging from accusations of backing down to the opposition to claims that this change will do very little to help Americans who need proper health insurance plans, the actual effect that it will have on the country’s coverage rate and cancellation rate has yet to be seen.
This is hardly the first struggle that the Obama Administration has had following the official opening of the health insurance exchanges on October 1, which brought with it a simultaneous closure of the federal government and a website that was riddled with bugs and errors, making it impossible for those who did want to purchase coverage to do so.
That said, in his address, Obama explained that this decision was not meant to solve all of the issues that are currently being faced. Instead, it is meant to allow them to keep their promises that people who liked their old insurance plans would not lose them. He said that “This fix won’t solve every problem for every person. But it’s going to help a lot of people,” and then added that “We are going to do everything we can to help the Americans who’ve received these cancellation notices.” Beyond that, he also stated that a “marked and noticeable” improvement would soon be evident on the federal healthcare.gov website.
