Obama grapples with resistance from states, insurers to his health-insurance fix - Washington Post

Faced with resistance from insurers and several states to his health-insurance fix, President Obama hastily called together insurance industry executives Friday to discuss their anxieties about how the new twist in his health-care law will be carried out.

A day after announcing a plan to delay insurance cancellations in the individual market by one year, Obama is grappling with concerns that the shift could disrupt the market and lead to higher premiums.

Already, three states — Washington Arkansas and Vermont — have announced that they will not allow their health insurers to extend insurance policies that do not comply with minimum standards set by the 2010 Affordable Care Act, the health-care law widely known as Obamacare.

Three other states — Ohio, Florida and Kentucky — announced that they would allow the renewals. Five states and the District of Columbia said they are trying to decide what to do in the wake of Obama’s announcement Thursday, which was intended to deal with a political furor over the cancellation of many Americans’ individual insurance policies because they do not meet the minimum requirements for coverage.

Combined with the botched rollout last month of HealthCare.gov, the Web site for the new federal health-insurance marketplace, the policy-cancellation uproar has helped undermine Obama’s signature domestic achievement, fueling political attacks by congressional Republicans and angst among vulnerable Democrats.

In a measure of the misgivings on Capitol Hill, 39 Democrats joined most Republicans in the House in voting 261 to 157 Friday to approve a bill that would allow insurance companies to keep selling indefinitely individual health policies that do not meet the law’s basic standards. Obama has vowed to veto the bill, introduced by Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and called the Keep Your Health Plan Act. The administration argues that the bill would effectively gut the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that, beginning next year, insurance policies cover at least 10 “essential” health benefits — such as maternity care and mental health services — that often are excluded from current private insurance plans.

“Today CEOs from across the health insurance industry will be meeting with President Obama and senior administration officials to discuss ways to work together to help people enroll through the [federal health-insurance] marketplace and efforts to minimize disruption for consumers as they transition to new coverage,” a senior administration official wrote in an e-mail ahead of the White House meeting.

Senior White House officials, including Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough, have met twice with insurance industry executives since the Oct. 1 launch of the federal marketplace to discuss its troubled rollout, and the administration consulted with some insurance companies on the president’s proposal before he announced it Thursday.

But the sudden decision to convene a meeting between the president and health-care chief executives highlighted both the level of anxiety within the insurance industry about the administration’s policy fix and the many questions that remain about how it will be carried out.