Hundreds of thousands of ObamaCare cancellations will notify voters no later than Nov. 1, just three days before polls open for the midterm elections on Nov. 4. Though some states such as Iowa have already begun early voting, or all mail-in ballots as in the state of Colorado, Democrats in tough Senate races are deeply concerned because federal law requires insurers give 60-day notice.
Officials from 13 states and the District of Columbia are now confirming what a Nov. 2013 study conducted by PPD found, which is that tens of thousands of policies in each state are not in compliance with the Essential Health Benefit Standards mandated by ObamaCare.
In total, counting employer-sponsored health plans, over 140 million Americans were previously covered by insurance that failed to meet the government-mandated standards. Yet, this new round of cancellations are only now affecting people just before the 2014 midterm elections because states that initially granted a reprieve at the request of President Obama are no longer willing to do so.
“It looks like several hundred thousand people across the country will receive notices in the coming days and weeks,” said Jim Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
Virginia, where Republican Ed Gillespie has struggled to gain traction after the wealthy and self-funded incumbent Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, will most impacted. The Old Dominion will see roughly 250,000 cancellation notices by the Nov. 1 deadline.
President Obama’s now infamous broken promise was always a two-fold disaster. “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan,” Obama said in 2009 speaking at the American Medical Association. It was a promise he repeated numerous times during the health care debate that was raging across the nation and, according to the Department of Health and Human Services documents, he knew it was lying to the American people.
But the president also promised the American people they could keep their doctor, which also was never true.
“If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away,” Obama promised. “No matter what.”
However, the majority of those receiving cancellation notices during the upcoming weeks will not be able to keep their doctors. They majority will also be forces to pay higher deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses.
Another state that has been and will be hit hard by the cancellations is North Carolina. Incumbent Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan is asking the people of North Carolina to believe that she only became aware of the law’s implications “when insurance companies began disingenuously offering plans that they knew they would be canceling.”
But GOP nominee Thom Tillis pushed the Greensboro Democrat to release an audio from a conference call she held on November 13, 2013, with reporters. Dana Milbank of the Washington Post chronicled that call, and it wasn’t pretty.
“Hagan hosted a conference call for reporters Tuesday morning to discuss the problems with the health-care law’s rollout, and the Q&A session was so painful that the senator should qualify for trauma coverage under the Affordable Care Act,” Milbank wrote.
Obama was eventually forced to half-heartedly admit that any plan that didn’t meet the government-mandated Essential Health Benefit Standards required under ObamaCare faced cancellation. His broken promise earned him the PoliFact “Lie Of The Year” award.
Meanwhile, the president delayed implementation of the employer mandate until after the 2014 midterm elections and, potentially after the 2016 presidential election, in order to avoid the severe shock before Democratic candidates have a chance to be held accountable foe their vote. ObamaCare is still deeply unpopular, with a majority in a recent survey saying they wish it was never even passed, at all.
