Obamacare Doesn’t Want Competition from Better Insurance Plans

Have you ever noticed that sometimes people say one thing when they actually mean another? The Biden Administration is passing regulations limiting short term medical coverage to protect consumers, but it’s really to protect Obamacare. The Biden Administration announced a final rule limiting the type of health insurance Americans are allowed to buy:

HHS, the Treasury Department and the Department of Labor issued proposed rules on Friday that clamp down on short-term limited duration health plans, which offer cheap but sparse coverage that Democrats deride as “junk insurance.” The rule, which is meant to protect consumers and bolster the Obamacare exchange, would overturn a 2018 Trump-era regulation and satisfies liberal lawmakers and patient groups who have demanded the administration act since its first days in the White House.

Politico also had this to say:

President Joe Biden wants skimpy, short-term health coverage to last no more than four months, reversing a Trump-era regulation.

All this time I thought the uninsured were a problem, not people who wanted to buy health insurance other than Obamacare.

“Short-term plans are intended to provide temporary coverage as people transition from one source of coverage to another,” said Neera Tanden, White House domestic policy adviser, on a call with reporters Thursday. “Under the previous administration, however, companies were able to take advantage of loopholes and sell junk insurance for much longer than intended.”

Have there been a lot of complaints about short-term medical plans? The only complaint I’ve heard are people with Obamacare.

Short-term plans do not have to meet the same requirements as a health insurance plan sold on the Obamacare insurance exchanges. These requirements can include coverage of pre-existing conditions and certain essential health benefits such as prescription drugs.

Supposedly, this was among several policy ideas to lower the cost of health care (by making us buy more expensive health coverage):

The Biden Administration doesn’t want you to have the insurance you prefer, calling it junk insurance. Speaking of junk insurance, have I told you about my experience with Obamacare? Last year I had a policy through a company I had never heard of. I never found a suitable doctor who participated in the plan. That is, I literally got no use out of the plan. All medical care I received was paying cash outside of the plan. At the end of the year I was notified the company was leaving the market in my state. Later I read the company was more or less told by the state to leave. The premiums were still between $7,000 and $8,000. I wonder if I can get a $7,000 refund for having junk health coverage? This year I have Cigna, but I have to spend nearly $9,000 before it covers anything and the annual premiums are nearly that much. Yet, the Biden Administration wants to take away any other option except going bare, which at my age is something of a risk.

The paragraph below tells the real reason the Biden Administration wants get rid of short term medical plans:

Short-term plans are likely to offer some healthier people lower premiums (because the plans include reduced benefits and cover less costly populations), and thus will lure healthy enrollees away from the individual and small-group markets and leave a costlier group behind. This dynamic, known as adverse selection, raises premiums for traditional, more comprehensive health coverage and undermines ACA protections for people with pre-existing conditions. Meanwhile, healthy people who enroll in these plans may find themselves facing gaps in coverage and exposed to catastrophic costs if they get sick and need care.

Basically, Obamacare is so unpopular that the Biden Administration must limit your options to Obamacare and subsidize it get Americans to buy it.