Barack Obama earned his place in Bartlett’s during the Obamacare debate with his famous fib, “If you like your doctor, you’ll be able to keep your doctor.” Now it turns out that Joe Biden uttered a similar whopper when he told an Iowa audience in 2019 that, under his health care agenda, “if in fact you have private insurance, you can keep it.”
The Biden administration last week announced a crackdown on what progressives describe as “junk” health insurance coverage. Democrats have long sought such an edict because these bare-bones private plans tend to attract younger, healthier adults who prefer not to pay more expensive premiums on the Obamacare exchange.
But if the goal is to limit the number of uninsured Americans, why take away this option? The answer is that Obamacare hasn’t turned out to be as affordable as promised.
Recall that the Affordable Care Act initially demanded that all adults sign up for health insurance coverage under the threat of financial penalty. The aim was to force younger, healthier adults into the system so they could subsidize coverage for those who needed more care. But Congress eventually eliminated the penalty and generous subsidies for Obamacare insurance, passed as part of the Inflation Reduction Act last year, will expire in 2025.
“Hence, the administration is trying to drive more young, healthy people back into the exchanges,” The Wall Street Journal noted last week.
These low-cost plans can be attractive to younger workers who don’t have access to insurance through work. They’re cheaper, in part, because they are unburdened by federal regulations demanding that policies include a host of mandated coverages — pediatric and maternity care, for instance — that consumers may not need. They have higher deductibles and provide enrollment flexibility, unlike policies offered on the exchanges.
As president, Donald Trump in 2018 expanded the availability of such stopgap plans, allowing consumers to use them for as long as 12 months, with the potential to renew them for up to three years. The Biden order would limit the length of these policies to four months.
This is the inevitable result when the government competes with those in the private marketplace. When the red ink follows, politicians rewrite the rules — in this case greatly limiting a viable option for thousands of Americans. In fact, if the plans didn’t meet the needs of enough consumers, the insurers that offer them would have pulled the plug already.
So much for if “you have private insurance, you can keep it.” Where are the fact-checkers?
