Letters: About those canceled insurance plans

Re “Obama puts the brakes on cancellations,” Nov. 15

Though it is understandable that people would want to keep their current health insurance plans, their outrage is shortsighted.

They should read the fine print of those insurance plans, which might exclude coverage for hospital stays, prescriptions, mental health services and more. Further, insurers are under no obligation to reinstate the policies they canceled, nor are they restricted from raising premiums.

The Affordable Care Act sets higher standards that the canceled policies do not meet. Too bad that many consumers prefer substandard coverage. They better stay healthy.

Lenore Navarro Dowling

Los Angeles

First we were told we could keep our policies if we liked them, “period.” Now it turns out that allowing the cancellation of individual “substandard” policies was necessary to get enough people into the exchanges to ensure a risk pool sufficient to keep premiums down.

Then we were told it would be easy to shop and compare policies via the government website, which isn’t working.

Now the insurance companies that set premiums for their exchange policies based on regulations requiring the cancellation of millions of individual policies, forcing those people to the exchanges, are being told to extend those old policies.

Don’t federal regulators police these sorts of bait-and-switch tactics?

Jeffrey C. Briggs

Hollywood

It’s unfortunate that website problems, an ignorant media and Republican Luddites have forced President Obama to put existing health coverage in the individual market back in the insurers’ court for one more year. Californians should be glad ours is one of those states offering alternatives to these junk plans, many of which provide only bare-bones coverage.

Not long ago, these plans conspired to be the biggest cause of personal bankruptcy in the U.S.

Harold N. Bass, MD

Porter Ranch

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