Insurance cancelled?

CANCELLATIONS NOT CAUSED BY "BAD APPLE CARRIERS"

WASHINGTON - Why are millions getting cancellation notices from their health care providers? Is it because all along you've carried what the Obama Administration calls "substandard plans" and they're using Obamacare to oust you? 

A whole website called "Mycancellation.com" is featuring cancellations insurance providers are sending out all over the nation to individual clients. Tuesday, blogger Michelle Malkin is planning a #myhealthcareplandied Day on Twitter. Those directly affected are speaking up. 

Townhall columnuist Matthew Needhum explains that the Affordable Care Act adds new government mandates that requires insurance providers to update and add on the new requirements. If any change to your policy takes place, the ACA law requires the whole plan to be scrapped. A new policy, with the required new provisions added hike the health care costs, and is causing the "sticker shock" with skyrocketing premiums and deductibles. 

In other words, despite what the Obama Administration insists, it's not bad apple carriers that are to blame for what's creating havoc among the self-employed insured. Here's how Needhum explains it:

While the Obama administration has admitted these insurance cancellations are taking place, the administration has attempted to shift the blame away from the Affordable Care Act. In a press conference on Tuesday, Press Secretary Jay Carney stated to those receiving health insurance cancellation notices, “Your insurer basically threw you off that plan.” On Wednesday, the President himself attributed these changes to “bad apple insurers” who are attempting to “downgrade or cancel these substandard plans.”

In reality, these insurance cancellations are the result of insurance companies simply complying with the regulations put in place by the Affordable Care Act. According to Peter Suderman, Senior Editor of Reason Magazine, the Affordable Care Act “institute[s] a slew of new requirements that [are] certain to result in health insurers dropping current plans for millions of people.” Many existing plans in the individual market, which were targeted to meet consumer demand, did not fit these mandates. Health insurance companies have had to cancel many of their existing plans to create new, more costly plans which do comply with these new mandates.

While this may be news to those who followed President Obama’s rhetoric over the past few years, the large number of health insurance cancellations were actuallyexpected by the Obama administration. NBC News recently took a look at regulations issued in July 2010, finding that the Obama Administration “knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them.”