If You Like Your Health Plan, You May Lose It Anyway

Another major employer, 3M, has decided to “eventually stop offering its health insurance plan to retirees, citing the federal health overhaul as a factor.”

As Reason‘s Peter Suderman notes, “despite the Obama administration’s repeated promises to the contrary, many people and employers will not, in fact, be able to stick with their current health care plans and arrangements. The White House had to sell the public — a large majority of whom were actually pretty happy with their existing health insurance — on the virtues of their plan while promising that it wouldn’t upset existing arrangements that people liked. That was obvious nonsense before the law passed.”

Principal Financial, “which provides coverage to about 840,000 people who receive their insurance through an employer,” announced on September 30 that it planned to stop selling health insurance.

Earlier, Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare terminated the Medicare Advantage healthcare plan of 22,000 people as a result of Obamacare. Insurers stopped writing child-only health insurance policies.  McDonald’s disclosed that it may dump employee health coverage for many employees thanks to the new healthcare law. Even if you keep your plan, your employer may end up paying a lot more for it (perhaps resulting in you getting pay cut so that your employer can pay for the increased costs of your health care plan).  As noted earlier, regulators in some states have approved increases in premiums because of how Obamacare increases costs.  Major employers like AT&T and Caterpillar have reported cost increases due to Obamacare.