he number of Americans tossed off their medical insurance plans under ObamaCare has finally been compiled and it’s a whopper — 4.2 million.
But it’s anybody’s guess how many people will be able to keep their existing coverage now that President Obama has proposed allowing insurers to offer one-year extensions.
States have the power to accept or reject the federal extension of plans that don’t meet minimum ObamaCare standards and three — Washington, Arkansas and Vermont — have already announced they won’t go along. Three others — Ohio, Florida and Kentucky — said they would allow the one-time renewals.
In New York, Gov. Cuomo’s administration said it still hasn’t decided. Representatives from major New York medical underwriters — including Empire BlueCross BlueShield — said Friday they’re awaiting guidance from Albany.
Officials have long said that millions would be receiving cancellation notices because their policies didn’t comply with the ObamaCare law. But it was only Friday that the Associated Press put the hard number at 4.2 million after a survey.
Obama huddled privately with 15 of the nation’s top insurance executives late Friday afternoon to discuss problems with his signature legislative achievement.
The trade association representing the insurance industry blasted Obama’s extension plan on Thursday, warning it could trigger rate hikes by discouraging younger and healthier people from enrolling through the new health exchanges.
Insurance officials said rates for new policies to take effect in 2014 were based on the assumption that the old, mostly bare-bones policies would be phased out and more people would sign up for comprehensive coverage.
“I appreciate all these folks coming in,” Obama said before the meeting in the White House Roosevelt Room. “We’re going to be soliciting ideas from them. This is going to be a collaborative process.
“We want to make sure we get this done so in the years to come that every American is going to have the kind of affordable health care they all deserve,” he added.
There were no further details.
The administration was hoping to upgrade the performance of its faltering HealthCare.gov Web site this weekend by adding new capacity just two weeks before a crucial deadline for having it running smoothly, a key presidential adviser said Friday.
“We will be bringing additional servers online, as well as additional database capacity and data storage,” Jeffrey Zients, Obama’s new fixer, told reporters in a conference call. “With these upgrades, we will significantly increase the system’s capacity.”
Zients sounded less cautious than a week earlier, when he described the site as being “a long way from where it needs to be” with higher volumes of visitors exposing new problems.
On Monday night, Obama will participate in a pep talk conference call himself with Obama for America supporters in an effort to boost his sagging ratings.