In another major unintended consequence of Obamacare, not only are people unable to buy health insurance through the Obamacare exchanges now that the enrollment deadline has passed*, but the possibility of buying health insurance through a private carrier also won’t be possible until November.
For a law designed to insure the uninsured, making it impossible to buy health insurance for a majority of the year seems quite stupid. Before Obamacare, if you wanted to buy health insurance any time of the year, you could. Now? Private insurers will follow the enrollment period of Obamacare, which only lasts for a couple of months every year. As The Denver Post reports:
[I]nsurers are refusing to sell to individuals after the enrollment period for HealthCare.gov and the state marketplaces. They will lock out the young and healthy as well as the sick or injured. Those who want to switch plans also are affected. The next wide-open chance to enroll comes in November for coverage in 2015.
It’s a little-noted consequence of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, which requires nearly all Americans to be insured or pay a fine and requires insurers to accept people with health problems.
“I have people that can buy insurance, but the companies shut them down. They won’t take the applications,” insurance broker Steve Bobiak of Frackville, Pa., said. “We’re a free country. You should be able to buy anything anytime you want.” [the Peak emphasis]
PeakNation™, we’ll be honest with you, with everything that has come out about Obamacare, we thought there was nothing left about it that could shock us. We were wrong. Now, even if you had the desire and the money to buy insurance—which, let us remind you once again, was the entire point of the law—you will be unable to until November.
You can’t keep your plan, you can’t keep your doctor, you can’t buy health insurance even if you wanted to. This bill is a monstrosity that should never have happened in the first place. Knowing what we know now, how Senator Mark Udall has the audacity to say he’d vote for it again, we have no idea.
What about Sen. Michael Bennett, would he vote for it again? Because Obamacare appears to be lingering worse than a stale fart and will still be an issue in 2016.
*Well, no one really knows for sure, Obama may have changed his mind this morning
This really should be no surprise. Open enrollment means just that, when the time ends enrollment is closed unless you go through a life altering event (lost insurance due to company, lost or changed jobs, reached that magic age where the parents no longer have you sucking them dry). They designed the enrollment just like Medicare.