The state Insurance Commissioner of Connecticut said on Monday that 27,000 health insurance policies have been cancelled in the state and that most of these will not be saved by President Obama’s sudden announcement last week that insurance companies would be permitted to extend policies that are “substandard.”
The CT Mirror reported that state Insurance Commissioner Thomas B. Leonardi said in a radio interview that only 9,000 of the 27,000 cancelled policies were discontinued due to the fact that they are now considered “substandard” under ObamaCare; the rest, he said, could have been continued into 2014, but insurance companies decided to discontinue them.
Downplaying the disastrous effects of the ObamaCare rollout, Leonardi said, “A lot of what you’re seeing here is the insurance companies doing what is their normal business practice of looking at their policies, their books of business and making cancellations in the normal course.”
Leonardi’s department will ultimately decide whether insurance policies may be extended according to Obama’s attempt to fix the broken law following outcries from Americans and Democrats who supported his health reform law and campaigned on its alleged merits. President Obama and many of his party told Americans that if they liked their health insurance plans and their doctors, they could keep them with ObamaCare.
Leonardi said his office would make a recommendation about whether insurance policies may be extended to Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy (D-WFP) “based on the facts.”
Obama’s abrupt attempt to salvage his health reform law means that, in Connecticut, insurance companies would be allowed to decide whether to continue policies already scheduled for cancellation. If they continue them, they must develop new prices for the previously-cancelled policies and then have them approved by Leonardi’s department by January 1st.
Leonardi said that the number of people whose health plans were cancelled because of the health law is relatively small.
“But I understand, believe me, that if you’re one of those people, you’re confused, you’re not happy, and I get that, and that’s why we’re working to figure this one out,” he said.
Malloy joined Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) and Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear (D) in a Washington Post editorial in which they wrote that ObamaCare “is working.”
The Affordable Care Act has been successful in our states because our political and community leaders grasped the importance of expanding health-care coverage and have avoided the temptation to use health-care reform as a political football.
However, as Paul Bedard at the Washington Examiner wrote on Monday, the blue states that supported Obama’s re-election will be cashing in under ObamaCare as tax dollars fill their states’ coffers.
Bedard cited a study from Wallet Hub, a web-based financial services firm, that showed taxpayers across the country are paying for the cost of Medicaid expansion under ObamaCare, regardless of whether their states decided to opt in or out. States that did not adopt ObamaCare receive nothing in return, a fact often used by Republican governors who opted “in” to justify their decision to expand big government entitlement spending.
“Blue states are expected to benefit most from ObamaCare reforms,” a Wallet Hub spokeswoman told Bedard.
According to the study, the blue states will receive huge benefits from taxpayers around the country. An example is that, for every dollar a Vermont resident pays into the system, they will receive $55 in new federal funding. However, in Mississippi – a state which has not opted into ObamaCare – taxpayers are giving up $8.03 in federal funding for every dollar they are currently set to pay for Medicaid expansion in other states.
According to the report, New York was named the top ObamaCare beneficiary, with Kentucky listed as fourth and Connecticut as tenth. Georgia stands to benefit least from ObamaCare, joining Texas, Idaho and Utah at the bottom of the list.