<p>There’s a little confusion in there since if it was changed at all is was by definition not the same plan, thus not grandfathered. But yeah, doesn’t really matter. The affordable part is apparently highly variable depending on state. Sigh.</p>
<p>“They did not have to be cancelled if they met those conditions. New plans set up after that date do have to meet all the ACA conditions.”</p>
<p>Not true on either count. Every plan in the individual market sold after March 2010 was cancelled. New plans sold after March 2010 did not have to meet all ACA conditions. </p>
<p>The only thing that separates grandfathered and non-grandfathered plans is if the plan was in existence prior to March of 2010. Yes, all grandfathered plans had to comply with a few ACA rules, but the defining litmus test was whether you bought the plan before March of 2010.</p>
<p>All this sub-standard stuff is a political talking point.</p>
<p>If you had two identical plans that complied with the ACA provisions to which you referred, and one was bought before March 2010 and the other was bought after March 2010, which one do you think you would be allowed to keep? The answer is not both.</p>
<p>Goldenpooch, I don’t really want to debate the fine points of the ACA with you. I came out asking whether anyone else had encountered the challenge we had with coverage over multiple states, and posted my result to help parents of other college students. I think you are wrong, here is the website about grandfathered plans:</p>
<p>[Grandfathered</a> Plans](<a href=“http://obamacarefacts.com/grandfathered-plans.php]Grandfathered”>http://obamacarefacts.com/grandfathered-plans.php) </p>
<p>Also, the basic coverarge required in plans under the ACA are not “political talking points” to me. They are minimum standards that help me be sure I am getting a plan that is actually “insurance” instead of something under another name that will not provide what we need if we get sick. You probably have employer based coverage or get it through your spouse’s employer – your employer is watching out for the quality of your plan (hopefully). Individuals buying insurance don’t have that same army of HR specialists watching out for their interests. But you clearly have a political axe to grind. So maybe this thread needs to be shut down, as you have taken it from something intended to get help with a situation for a college student to something else.</p>
<p>Many canceled plans were in no way sub-standard. That’s just a fact. Some were actually better for the customers than the more expensive ACA plans. Another fact. Glad your happy and have found your way thru this challenge because there will be more ahead. Another fact.</p>
<p>intaprent,</p>
<p>did you have to buy the insurance plan through exchange? (I am also from MN).</p>
<p>I just talked to my friend at work who is a contractor. She bought her plan through exchange too and she still does not have any information regarding her policy (like insurance card, access to online account on BCBS website, etc). She enrolled mid-December.</p>
<p>The exchange shows that she is enrolled and paid, but she cannot use her insurance because she does not have ANY communication from BCBS. </p>
<p>My friend does not qualify for subsidies, so I am not sure why she bought hers at exchange and not directly (we are too swamped at work right now to talk more). </p>
<p>I wonder now if people who don’t qualify for subsidies can buy exchange insurance directly from insurers and whether or not mnsure fixed its technical problems (from what I remember in early December 2013 mnsure still had no connection between its system and insurance companies’ systems).</p>
<p>Anyway, I thought I will relay this info to you (useful or not :)).</p>
<p>Your friend could have bought directly from the insurer. But she still might not have heard from her insurer, especially if it’s Anthem.</p>
<p>lerkin -</p>
<p>Your friend has to be willing to hang on the phone for however long it takes in order to get through to customer service so that she can get her ID number from the people at BCBS. Hard to pull off in most work places where one might be expected to take a different call while on hold, but it really is what she needs to do.</p>
<p>At least with BCBS MN, you can’t buy the exact same plan as you see on MNSURE by calling BCBS. They said they have some that they can sell directly that according to the BCBS rep only a little bit from the MNSURE plans. I decided to buy the MNSURE ones because I could see for sure that they met the ACA requirements; I didn’t want the risk of purchasing a plan that may be grandfathered and does not have all the protections of the ACA plans. I have worked in health insurance long enough that I am not entirely trusting of insurance companies, and felt this was the best way to ensure that I got a plan that couldn’t be cancelled if my kid gets sick, etc. </p>
<p>What I did was find the plan I wanted on MNSURE. Made a couple of phone calls (to MNSURE and BCBS) to gather info. Then called MNSURE back to make the purchase. They took my info over the phone, gave me info on where to mail the first premium (which I did the very next day), and said to call BCBS if I don’t hear from them in 14 days. Your friend should call the insurance company if she has not heard from them. Just FYI, BCBS was pretty quick to answer the phone (less than 5 minutes). </p>
<p>Of course not all plans that were cancelled were substandard. The insurance companies made some choices to cancel plans that could have been continued (possibly because they had other business reasons for cancelling, and wanted to pawn the blame on ACA?). One of those business reasons could have been that they didn’t want to manage that many plans, since they all added new plans for the ACA.</p>
<p>Actingmt, my guess is that you are hoping there will be more problems ahead. Which is a little sad for all the people who need insurance and are now able to purchase it reasonably through this process without being denied for pre-existing conditions, and know that their plans can’t be cancelled because they are ill and that they include basic coverage. It is tiring to have people hoping this will fail.</p>
<p>I have a small business (one person), and before the ACA I figured I was going to have to shutter my business and take a corporate job when my ex-H retired. Turns out I do have a longer COBRA extension than I expected, but many people do not have that. I believe the ACA will give people who want to start their own businesses and have been held back by the availability of affordable health insurance (or any health care if they have a whiff of a pre-existing condition) a chance to do that. Could provide a significant boost to the start of small businesses in the next few years, IMHO. When I talk to people about what I do for a living, often the first question they ask me is how I get health care. It has been a drag on starting small businesses for several years now.</p>
<p>Actingmt, my guess is that you are hoping there will be more problems ahead. </p>
<p>No, not at all. But it’s pretty much a given. Honestly. the level of incompetence on display with this whole thing has been rather stunning. Just to clear up one thing, non-ACA compliant and sub-standard are not synonyms. The insurance companies had no choice. It is a highly regulated industry, after all. No-one said there weren’t problems before. I am very familiar with small business and pre-existing conditions. Trust me. I’m also not at all sure this is better in so many ways. But, we’ll see. I actually wish it was better.</p>
<p>I thought the point of grandfathered individual plans was that they were closed to new subscribers. So there could be no danger of accidentally buying a grandfathered plan, because no grandfathered plan would be for sale to new buyers.</p>
<p>Nope, that would be impossible. You couldn’t accidentally buy a grandfathered plan. You had to already have it to get grandfathered.</p>
<p>Just to clarify: on the individual market whether or not a plan was “grandfathered” depends on the date that the insured person purchased it. Before March 2010: “grandfathered”. If same plan was purchased later on, then not “grandfathered”. For family coverage, it would depend on the date it was initially purchased – in other words if a couple purchased coverage in 2009 and then added a child to the plan in 2012, the child would be “grandfathered” based on the parents status.</p>
<p>The same plans could be sold between March 2010 and December 2013, but they would not have “grandfathered” status.</p>
<p>Post 2014, in theory all plans sold have to be compliant with ACA standards. There’s a wrinkle on that which varies from state to state, because of the Obama administration’s decision to permit some people to keep their plans for an additional year, and because of differences in state regulations-- for example, in many states a non-ACA compliant plan could be purchased in December 2013 and be good for a year. Also, as a friend of mine has unfortunately learned, college plans are allowed to operate on a school year basis, so students seeking insurance now can still be turned down because of pre-existing conditions (because it is the 2013-2014 school year) – though as of fall semester 2014 those plans will have to be open to everyone. </p>
<p>I think the technical issue of whether an insurance company can change terms of an old plan to comply with ACA requirements, along with adjusting premiums, may also depend on state regulations. In California, non-grandfathered individuals received notices that our plans were being terminated, but that if we did nothing our companies would roll us over automatically into a newly-titled complaint plan. </p>
<p>But I’m not sure that the net effect would be different from an insurance company simply notifying insured individuals that effective January 1, or on the renewal date of the policy, the terms were being changed to meet ACA standards – that is actually the net impact of what Blue Shield was doing in California with its cancellation/rollover notice. I know because they did in fact roll me over, and when they did they preserved the same individual subscriber number and web log-in that I had previously, even though the insurance group number changed – but if I had opted for the rollover, then the transition would have been relatively seamless. However, I wanted to buy on the exchange, so when I saw that I had been double-enrolled by Blue Shield I called to cancel the rollover policy.</p>
<p>Calmom is correct in her explanation of the difference between grandfather and non-grandfathered plans. If you had a non-grandfathered plan it was either cancelled or in some states extended for one year. Getting cancelled had nothing to do with your plan being sub-standard, only if you owned it before March of 2010. </p>
<p>I wish all the supporters would stop saying only sub-standard plans were getting cancelled. Sub-standard is an irrelevant term as it relates to whether you were allowed to keep your plan.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That’s not correct. In most states, non-grandfathered plans could continue if they were ACA-compliant. In California a lot of plans were cancelled, but in other states ACA-compliant plans weren’t cancelled.</p>
<p>CF, are you saying that non-grandfathered plans that existed before 2014 (ACA-compliant or not) in some states were allowed to continue indefinitely? Please tell me which states and cite me a source for this.</p>
<p>
In my view, any plan that excluded membership based on health history was “sub-standard”. Just because they let me past the gate way back when doesn’t fix the problem.</p>
<p>Covered California required that non-grandfathered policies be cancelled. But that was a state decision, applying only to California. In other states, those plans could have been brought into compliance instead.</p>
<p>[Covered</a> California contracts required insurers to cancel “non-compliant” individual coverage - San Francisco Business Times](<a href=“http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2013/11/covered-california-contracts-required.html]Covered”>http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2013/11/covered-california-contracts-required.html)</p>
<p>CF, which states?</p>
<p>As far as I know, all the other states. It was a state decision, not a federal decision.</p>