Obama to Cantor in 2010: 8 to 9 million Americans will lose coverage
President Barack Obama admitted in 2010 that 8 or 9 million Americans would lose their existing health insurance plans under Obamacare.
“The 8 to 9 million people that you refer to that might have to change their coverage — keep in mind out of the 300 million Americans that we’re talking about — would be folks who the CBO, Congressional Budget Office, estimates would find the deal in the exchange better,” Obama said to Rep. Eric Cantor at a February 25, 2010 White House summit on health insurance regulation....
Access shock a bigger problem for Obama than lost insurance
...That’s why it isn’t Obama’s repeated pledges that people could keep their health care plans that are likely to cause him the most political headaches. It’s his other promise.
As he formulated it in a 2009 speech to the American Medical Association: “[N]o matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period.”
Ultimately, if the tech problems plaguing the rollout of Obamacare are fixed, and Americans are able to obtain affordable health insurance through the law’s new exchanges that allow them to keep their doctors, the current uproar over lost insurance plans will simmer down.
But if Americans also lose their doctors, the political problems confronting the president and Obamacare will only deepen.
In the face of media reporting on the high cost of Obamacare-compliant insurance plans, defenders of the law have typically noted that the Congressional Budget Office expected them to be even more expensive.
But one of the main ways insurers contained costs was by stripping down the number of hospitals and doctors that are covered by their plans....
...In August, Modern Healthcare reported on a McKinsey & Co. analysis of 955 Obamacare plan offerings in 13 states, which found that almost half were of “the narrow-network type,” meaning enrollees' choices were restricted and that they would “have limited or no coverage if they seek care outside their plan network.”
A survey of 409 doctors by the Medical Society of the State of New York found that 44 percent weren’t participating in any health plan offered on the state’s exchange, 33.5 percent weren’t sure if they were participating in any plans and just 6.4 percent said they were participating in more than five plans....
