Obamacare: If you like your plan you can keep it…unless HHS decides to change it

  We all remember Barack Obama’s promise that under his healthcare proposal if you liked your healthcare plan you would be able to keep your healthcare plan, right? And we also remember his promise that the average family would save about $2,500 in healthcare premiums, right?

  Of course we do but things did not pan out that way did they? In the case of the former many people lost their healthcare coverage and in the case of the latter healthcare premiums continue to rise.

  The Department of Health and Human Services has come up with an ingenious way to hide the premium increases for those who signed up for healthcare insurance using the exchanges.

  Here is more about the proposed changes in Obamacare’s auto-renewal policy:

In a 300-page regulatory proposal released late this afternoon, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that it is considering changing Obamacare’s auto-renewal rules so that, within the health law’s exchanges, instead of being automatically renewed into your current health plan, you’d be moved into the lowest cost plan from the same service tier.

Under current rules, consumers who do not take action during the open enrollment window are re-enrolled in the same plan they were in the previous year, even if that plan experienced significant premium increases. We are considering alternative options for re-enrollment, under which consumers who take no action might be defaulted into a lower cost plan rather than their current plan.

It’s not just auto-reenrollment. It’s auto-reassignment, at least for those who pick that option. Basically, if you like your plan, but don’t go out of your way to intentionally re-enroll, the kind and wise folks at HHS or state health exchanges might just pick a new plan—perhaps with different doctors, clinics, cost structures, and benefit options—for you. And if you want to switch back? Good luck once open enrollment is closed. There’s always next year. 

  So, in order to hide the fact that Obamacare has done nothing to lower the cost of insurance HHS is going to auto-enroll some people into lower cost insurance, hoping they do not notice, thereby breaking once again Barack Obama’s promise of being able to keep your insurance if you like it while at the same time pushing these people into plans which will cost them more out of pocket expenses before the insurance kicks in.

  And this is progress? Honestly, you cannot make this stuff up…