More insurers dropping individual coverage as Obamacare rolls out

The Obamacare train wreck is far from finished in terms of a mangled website roll out and the ripple effect of millions losing their existing health insurance plans. Several reports out during this past week show more cancellations and loss of coverage from Florida to the nation’s capital.

Report and video from CBS News:

The Affordable Care Act was signed by President Obama in 2010 and since then he has repeated one reassuring phrase: “If you like your insurance plan you will keep it. No one will be able to take that away from you. It hasn’t happened yet. It won’t happen in the future.”

But it is happening. The president’s health care law raises the standards for insurance policies, which many consider to be a good thing. But hundreds of thousands of Americans whose policies don’t meet the new standards are being told that their health plans are being cancelled.

Natalie Willes is a sleep consultant who helps parents in Los Angeles train their newborns to sleep. She buys her own health insurance.

“I was completely happy with the insurance I had before,” Willes said.

So she was surprised when she tried to renew her policy. What did she find out?

“That my insurance was going to be completely different, and they were going to be replaced with 10 new plans that were going to fall under the regulations of the Affordable Care Act,” she said.

Some more news from the Washington, DC region via the Washington Examiner:

CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield is being forced to cancel plans that currently cover 76,000 individuals in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., due to changes made by President Obama’s health care law, the company told the Washington Examiner today.

That represents more than 40 percent of the 177,000 individuals covered by CareFirst in those states.

Though Obama famously promised that those who liked their health care coverage could keep it under his program, in reality, the health care law imposes a raft of new regulations on insurance policies starting Jan. 1 that are forcing insurers across the country to terminate existing plans.

Still more from Kaiser Health News:

Florida Blue, for example, is terminating about 300,000 policies, about 80 percent of its individual policies in the state. Kaiser Permanente in California has sent notices to 160,000 people – about half of its individual business in the state. Insurer Highmark in Pittsburgh is dropping about 20 percent of its individual market customers, while Independence Blue Cross, the major insurer in Philadelphia, is dropping about 45 percent.

Anyone have any personal experience with this? It’s been asked before, but apparently reports in the prior months were the tip of the iceberg as cancellation reports continue pouring in as we head into 2014 under the new Obamacare rules.