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#Obamacare: California required the canceling of insurance policies

**Posted by Phineas

"Obamacare has arrived"
“Obamacare has arrived”

Pushing back against the growing stories of people losing their individual health insurance coverage because of the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare apologists have taken to scapegoating the insurance companies [1], even claiming that the cancellations were happening because the companies couldn’t compete, as in this mendacious Talking Points Memo [2] piece.

In California, at least, that just ain’t so [3]:

Specific language in the contracts major health insurers signed with Covered California to participate in the exchange required them to cancel the individual coverage which is at the center of a growing national debate.

Anthem Blue Cross, Kaiser Permanente, Health Net and Blue Shield of California have confirmed to the San Francisco Business Times that their Covered California contracts, signed in August or September, required the cancellations. Other plans on the exchange are subject to the same contract language.

“All QHPs (of which we are one) had to sign that contract,” said Darrel Ng, a spokesman for Anthem Blue Cross, referring to insurers known as qualified health plans.

And here’s the language in question:

“Contractor agrees that effective no later than December 31, 2013, except as otherwise provided in State Law, it shall terminate or arrange for the termination of all of its non-grandfathered individual health insurance plan contracts or policies which are not compliant with the applicable provisions of the Affordable Care Act. Contractor agrees to promote ways to offer, market and sell or otherwise transition its current members into plans or policies which meet the applicable Affordable Care Act requirements. This obligation applies to all non-grandfathered individual insurance products in force or for sale by Contractor whether or not the individuals covered by such products are eligible for subsidies in the Exchange.”

“Grandfathered” products could avoid this requirement, but, as we’ve seen [4], Senate Democrats made it very easy for insurance plans to become non-grandfathered and thus illegal.

I’ve often said that the California legislature is the AAA farm team for congressional Democrats; whatever nonsense federal progressives come up with, their junior partners in Sacramento will sign onto it with pathetic enthusiasm in hopes of earning a promotion to the “Big Leagues” in D.C.

I wonder how Edie Sundby [5] will feel when she learns that her state government had a large hand in endangering her treatment for stage-4 cancer?

via Jim Geraghty [6]

(Crossposted at Public Secrets [7])