Northwest Indiana Discussion

The cancellations will affect only a small number of people, those who buy individual policies.

In making this claim, the president focuses on the individual market, which he accurately notes covers about 5 percent of Americans. Still, that is about 14 to 15 million people. So far, as of mid November, roughly 4.8 million individual insurance plans have been canceled, with most estimates suggesting that as many as 10 million will eventually lose their current coverage.

But the same conditions that are causing the cancellation of individual policies will eventually result in thecancellation of millions of employment-based policies as well. The only reason that hasn’t happened yet is that the employer mandate was postponed for a year, so employer plans don’t yet have to be ACA-compliant. But they will. Even the Congressional Budget Office estimates that as many as 20 million workers will lose their current employer-sponsored plans. Combine that with those losing individual plans, and more than 30 million Americans cannot keep their current insurance.

It could be far more. As Avik Roy of the Manhattan Institute points out, some 51 percent of the employer-based insurance market will lose grandfathered status and need to make changes to comply with Obamacare provisions. That could mean that, in total, as many as 93 million will lose their insurance. That’s not exactly “a few.”

President Obama told a gathering of business executives on Tuesday that the federal government was not “lavishly spending” on social programs.

“What we know is, is that our — our fiscal problems are not short-term deficits. Our discretionary budget, that portion of the federal budget that isn’t defense or Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid, the entitlement programs, is at its smallest level in my lifetime, probably since Dwight Eisenhower.

“We are not lavishly spending on a whole bunch of social programs out there,” Obama continued. “And in many ways, a lot of these programs have become more efficient and pretty effective,” he added.

Americans buying health insurance outside the new Obamacare exchanges are being forced to swallow premiums up to 56 percent higher than before the health law took effect because insurers have jumped the cost to cover all the added features of the new Affordable Care Act.

According to a cost report from eHealthInsurance, a nationwide online private insurance exchange, families are paying an average of $663 a month and singles $274 a month, far more than before Obamacare kicked in. What’s more, to save money, most buyers are choosing the lowest level of coverage, the so-called “bronze” plans.

The firm provided the costs to Secrets through their new online price index, which gives the averages of what people are paying for insurance sold through their system. In California, for example, some families are paying a high of $2,604 a month and in New York, $1,845.

Timothy Geithner, the former secretary of the Treasury Department, says the White House wanted him to lie in scheduled appearances on the Sunday TV talk shows. As Geithner writes in his new memoir:

“I remember during one Roosevelt Room prep session before I appeared on the Sunday shows, I objected when Dan Pfeiffer wanted me to say Social Security didn’t contribute to the deficit. It wasn’t a main driver of our future deficits, but it did contribute. Pfeiffer said the line was a ‘dog whistle’ to the left, a phrase I had never heard before. He had to explain that the phrase was code to the Democratic base, signaling that we intended to protect Social Security.”

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The Washington Examiner is a political journalism publication based in Washington, D.C., that distributes its content via daily online reports and a weekly magazine.[1] It is owned by MediaDC,[2] a subsidiary of Clarity Media Group,[3] which is owned by Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz[4] and which also owns the influential conservative opinion magazine The Weekly Standard