Keep Your Health Plan Act backed by four Iowa legislators

WASHINGTON – On Friday, November 15, 2013, the House considered and passed H.R. 3350, the Keep Your Health Plan Act of 2013.  H.R. 3350 was introduced on October 28, 2013 by Representative Fred Upton (R-MI), Chairman, House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and had 88 cosponsors.  H.R. 3350 allows providers to continue to offer in 2014 those health insurance plans in effect in the individual market as of January 1, 2013. The plans will be treated as grandfathered health plans.

All four Iowa Congressmen – Bruce Braley, Dave Loebsack, Tom Latham and Steve King – voted to approve the act.

Steve King said Friday that “This bill is an effort to help the President keep his word, and Lord knows he needs a lot of help.”

President Obama saidThursday that “I’ve assigned my team to see what can we do to close some of the holes and gaps in the law, because my intention is to lift up and make sure the insurance that people buy is effective, that it’s actually going to deliver what they think they’re purchasing.

The Affordable Care Act is silent as to health insurance plan changes that lead to a loss of grandfathered status. However, on June 17, 2010, the Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor, and Treasury (the departments) issued interim final rules significantly narrowing the interpretation of what constitutes a grandfathered plan.

In addition, the interim final rules contained analyses on the impact that such interpretation changes would have on grandfathered status. Specifically, the analyses estimated that half of all employer health plans would lose their grandfathered status by the end of 2013, including 45 percent of larger employer plans and 66 percent of small business plans.  For the individual market, the analyses estimated that anywhere between 40-67 percent of individual policies would lose their grandfathered status.  According to a recent U.S. Census report issued earlier this fall, nearly 64 percent of Americans, 198 million, were covered by private insurance in 2012.  170 million of those individuals were covered by employer-based coverage, with the rest of Americans purchasing health insurance coverage through the individual market. In fact, one out of ten health insurance policies is sold on the individual market.  However, over the last several weeks, millions of Americans in the individual markets have witnessed the termination of their health care plans.

Congressman John Boehner issued the following statement today applauding House passage of the Keep Your Health Plan Act: “The president broke his word, had a chance to fix the problem, and only did more damage to his credibility. Today, the House made a big, bipartisan statement about the need to make things right.  The Keep Your Health Plan Act represents an important step toward providing relief to those who have lost their plans and face much higher premiums, but the real solution is to scrap the president’s fundamentally-flawed health care law and focus on effective, patient-centered reforms that will protect all Americans from this train wreck.”