93 Million Could Lose Health Insurance Plans

The hits just keep on coming for the Affordable Care Act.

So far the most outrage over the ACA (Obamacare) has centered on people with individual plans. But people will other plans will be hurt too — and that’s based on the Obama administration’s own official comments.

Based on the administration’s own estimates in The Federal Register, Forbes reports, 93 million Americans could lose their health plans. That’s because employer-sponsored insurance plans will also fall victim to the ACA:

“The Departments’ mid-range estimate is that 66 percent of small employer plans and 45 percent of large employer plans will relinquish their grandfather status by the end of 2013,” wrote the administration on page 34,552 of the [Federal] Register. All in all, more than half of employer-sponsored plans will lose their “grandfather status” and get canceled. According to the Congressional Budget Office, 156 million Americans—more than half the population—was covered by employer-sponsored insurance in 2013.

Forbes figures the total of people who will lose individual or employer-sponsored plans will be 93 million.

In other words, this isn’t just about a website. It’s about lies that helped sell the ACA, and about how the ACA is destroying the health insurance system.

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BTW, North Carolina has caught flak for not sponsoring its own state-sponsored health exchange. Supposedly such exchanges in other states work better.

Uh, no. CBS has found that states have spent $1 billion on setting up their exchanges. And many have the same kinds of problems HealthCare.gov has displayed.

As my colleague just reminded us: There’s no such thing as a free lunch. ACA advocates have said the federal money is free, but of course here’s one more case when it isn’t.