Politics and Money

[arizona1]

It's understandable for people to get upset when they are finally fully covered then get the policy canceled because it doesn't meet the Ocare criteria.

That's the point! All the policies being cancelled are called JUNK insurance and cover NOTHING!

Sheesh! You're a very lazy person who never does any research or wouldn't post such obvious right-wing propaganda..

What the Pundits AREN'T telling us about those "Cancelled Insurance Policies"

1) They are "Junk Insurance Policies" -- think "Junk Bonds."

They don't minimize "financial risk" -- they just bury it.

That Florida woman's canceled Blue Cross policy? It's junk insurance.

by Nancy Metcalf, consumerreports.org -- Oct 29, 2013

Did you recently get a notice saying that your insurance company is canceling your policy because it doesn't meet the new health law's higher standards? Thousands of people are, and many are angry about it. But before you rush to judgement, it might not be as bad as it seems.

Consider the case of Diane Barrette, a 56-year-old woman from Winter Haven, Fla. Her story was featured in this CBS News report and endlessly echoed on the Internet. She was upset because Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida was canceling her $54-a-month “GoBlue plan 91” and offering to replace it with a $591-a-month “Blue Options Essential plan.”

Sounds terrible -- except that Barrette’s expiring policy is a textbook example of a junk plan that isn’t real health insurance at all. If she had ever tried to use it for anything more than an occasional doctor visit or inexpensive prescription, she would have ended up with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical debt.
[...]

Is it really "Insurance" -- when you go to use it -- it just vanishes into thin air?

2) "Junk Insurance Policies" can take away life -- not protect it:

Paying for 'Junk Insurance" is usually not the problem -- actually trying to use it to offset the cost of any major illness, is where the "junk" starts to litter the GOP health-highway.

Junk health insurance
Stingy plans may be worse than none at all

from Consumer Reports magazine -- March 2012

[...]
Judith Goss, 48, of Macomb, Mich., believed that the Cigna plan she obtained through her job at the Talbots retail chain was “some type of insurance that would cover something.” When the store she worked at closed in January 2011, she even paid $65 a month to keep the coverage through COBRA.

“I was aware that it wasn’t a great plan, but I wasn’t concerned because I wasn’t sick,” she says. But in July 2011 she was diagnosed with breast cancer, at which point the policy’s annual limits of $1,000 a year for outpatient treatment and $2,000 for hospitalization became a huge problem. Facing a $30,000 hospital bill, she delayed treatment. “Finally my surgeon said, ‘Judy, you can’t wait anymore.’ While I was waiting my tumor became larger. It was 3 centimeters when they found it and 9 centimeters when they took it out.” After a double mastectomy, radiation treatments, and reconstructive surgery, Goss is taking the drug tamoxifen to prevent recurrence.

The Talbots Cigna Starbridge plan is one of many similar mini-med insurance products aimed at workers in industries such as retail, food service, and temporary staffing agencies. Their hallmark is extremely limited benefits, often, as with the Talbots plan, no more than a few thousand dollars a year. A Cigna promotional brochure touts the plans as “coverage for everyone” and reassures employers that they don’t have to contribute to the cost of the coverage if they don’t want to.
[...]

3) "Junk Insurance Policies" give Insurance Policies a bad name. These Faux-Policies deserve to be cancelled, assuming wellness and good health are our national goals.
It's a consumer-protection issue, at its core. Got that, Pundits?

4) By getting all in an uproar about those "millions of 'Cancelled Insurance Policies'" -- the pavlov Obamacare-haters are really arguing that We the People have the Right to be duped by Insurers!

No pesky questions for the Insurance Companies ... they NEED all that "fine print" ... "Exclusions" are their bread and butter, don't you know?

But don't take my word for it. Take it from Consumer Reports and the LA Times ...

Obamacare hysteria: Don't believe the canceled insurance hype

by Michael Hiltzik, LATimes.com -- Oct 30, 2013

Back in March, Consumer Reports published a study of many of these plans and placed them in a special category: "junk health insurance." Some plans, the magazine declared, may be worse than none at all.

Consumer Reports is right. Plans with monthly premiums in the two figures marketed to customers in their 30s, 40s, or even 50s invariably impose ridiculously low coverage limits. They've typically been pitched to people who couldn't find affordable insurance because of their age or preexisting conditions, or who were so financially strapped that they were lured by the cheap upfront cost.

"People buy a plan that's terrible," says Nancy Metcalf, CR's senior project editor for health, "and if they get sick, they don't even know they don't have insurance."
[...]

5) There's a reason why 'Junk Insurance' is cheap ... The reason? It's Junk. Calling it "insurance" is an insult to ... the idea of safe-guarding your future well-being, and that of your family's ...

Isn't it time, the Pundits, start telling us the Truth about "Affordable" Health Care? And exactly what "affordable" means to the average person?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/11/03/1252743/-What-the-Pundits-AREN-T-telling-us-about-those-Cancelled-Insurance-Policies