Insurance Companies Are Still The Obamacare Bad Guys

Suddenly, Republicans are very, very concerned about people having their insurance policies canceled and being stuck with "substantially" more expensive plans.  But the reality is the insurance companies are happily using Obamacare as a smokescreen to screw their customers over every chance they get.  TPM's Dylan Scott discovers the truth as he investigates the case of Donna, a Washington State resident who got a cancellation notice from her insurer.

Across the country, insurance companies have sent misleading letters to consumers, trying to lock them into the companies' own, sometimes more expensive health insurance plans rather than let them shop for insurance and tax credits on the Obamacare marketplaces -- which could lead to people like Donna spending thousands more for insurance than the law intended. In some cases, mentions of the marketplace in those letters are relegated to a mere footnote, which can be easily overlooked. 

The extreme lengths to which some insurance companies are going to hold on to existing customers at higher price, as the Affordable Care Act fundamentally re-orders the individual insurance market, has caught the attention of state insurance regulators. 

The insurance companies argue that it's simply capitalism at work. But regulators don't see it that way. By warning customers that their health insurance plans are being canceled as a result of Obamacare and urging them to secure new insurance plans before the Obamacare launched on Oct. 1, these insurers put their customers at risk of enrolling in plans that were not as good or as affordable as what they could buy on the marketplaces. 

TPM has confirmed two specific examples where companies contacted their customers prior to the marketplace's Oct. 1 opening and pushed them to renew their health coverage at a higher price than they would pay through the marketplace. State regulators identified the schemes, but they weren't necessarily able to stop them. 

It's not yet clear how widespread this practice became in the months leading up to the marketplace's opening -- or how many Americans will end up paying more than they should be for health coverage. But misleading letters have been sent out in at least four states across the country, and one offending carrier, Humana, is a company with a national reach.

So at least some of these cancellation notices sent out by insurance companies were attempts to sucker  people into the most expensive plans they offer, automatically, before the protections of Obamacare kicked in fully.

Let's remember the practices that made the ACA necessary in the first place.  Republicans want to take us back to these bad old days across the country.