Thursday, November 21, 2013

NY State won't allow cancelled health insurance policies to be reinstated. Insurance cos. have known for years many policies would be cancelled so it wasn't a surprise to them

.
Insurance companies "have spent years planning for 2014 on the assumption that substandard insurance plans would be terminated."

11/20/13, "Governor declines to resurrect canceled health insurance policies in New York," medcitynews.com, Stephen T. Watson

"One week after President Obama offered to let people keep their canceled health insurance plans for another year -- if their insurers agreed to renew those plans -- Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has announced they won't have the chance in New York. 
.
Insurers here had been waiting for instructions on how to proceed since Thursday, when the president responded to heavy criticism by agreeing to let insurance companies offer the plans, deemed substandard under the Affordable Care Act, to members who wanted to keep them in 2014. Insurance companies here got their answer Monday and are happily proceeding with the state's status-quo policy, which Cuomo and industry officials argue is working far better than the widely panned federal insurance exchange.

"You know, we haven't had the kind of issues in New York on our exchange that they've had nationwide. Our program has actually been working well. The website has been working well. And we've had, actually, very good success with our program. So we don't see any reason to change it now, because we're not having those types of issues," Cuomo said in response to a question at a news conference Monday on Staten Island. The announcement affects more than 137,000 people in Western New York who received cancellation notices for their plans, which in some cases are cheaper than the new insurance policies now being sold on the state insurance exchange.

However, industry officials said they have spent years planning for 2014 on the assumption that substandard insurance plans would be terminated, and they argued that resurrecting the plans at this late date would create logistical problems and foment consumer confusion."...via Free Rep.
===========================

Comment: Insurance companies knew many policies would be cancelled. It wasn't a secret. It was the whole idea. It remains the whole idea. (Added: The unpleasant white patches behind this post were placed there by google hackers.)


.

No comments: