It’s right there in black-and-white on page 43 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
The president’s famous promise that if you like your plan you can keep your plan (without which the bill most certainly would never have passed) is indeed the law of the land. It is Section 1251, to be exact. This is what it says:
Ironclad. Bulletproof. If you like your plan, “nothing in this Act” can “require that an individual terminate coverage.” It’s. The. Law.
So why are millions of Americans receiving cancelation letters?
Because in one of the first of many lawless abuses of executive authority to distort, ignore, or rewrite the law, President Obama issued a shameful regulation just months after the law was passed known as the Grandfathered Plan Rule that – in blatant violation of the president’s famous promise embodied in Section 1251 – terminated the overwhelming majority of plans in the individual market by invalidating grandfather status for minor routine changes of the sort that most plans have always made annually.
NBC News recently discovered the shameful rulemaking, writing: “Buried in Obamacare regulations from July 2010 is an estimate that because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, ‘40 to 67 percent’ of customers will not be able to keep their policy.”
The actual estimate in the interim final rule was that 40 to 67 percent in the individual market would lose grandfather status each year. They also estimated that 49 to 80 percent of small employer plans and 34 to 64 percent of large employer plans would lose grandfather status.
While NBC News only discovered the issue this week, Republicans responded immediately. Senator Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) forced a vote in September 2010 on overturning the rule:
“Throughout the health care debate, the President continually promised, ‘If you like what you have you can keep it.’ The grandfathered health plan rule breaks the President’s promise,” Enzi said.
Enzi is urging colleagues to demand a vote on a resolution of disapproval (S.J. Res. 39) to overturn the so-called grandfather rule in health care reform – a provision that was supposed to spare small businesses already providing health insurance to their employees many of higher costs and new mandates the law imposes.
Unfortunately, Enzi’s resolution failed along party lines. Every single Senate Democrat, just months after voting for the law that included Section 1251, voted to allow Obama to gut it.
And now Obama’s lawless rule forcing millions to lose “plans they like” is hitting with full force.