Through the smoke

Historically, two sins have been especially perilous in American politics.

One is promising something plain and definitive-“Read my lips: No new taxes”-then not keeping the promise. The other is placing an unfair squeeze on what’s left of the hardworking, rule-obeying middle class.

So I wish to share with you a quote from President Barack Obama back in 2009 during the raging congressional health-care debate. He said these words: “If you like your health-care plan, you will be able to keep your health-care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.”

Period, he said. No matter what, he said.

So I read my president’s lips. As a self-employed contractor no longer covered on a company group health-insurance plan, I took comfort in knowing that the uncommonly economical individual plan that works well for me and that I secured after a little medical check in 2010-a $2,500-deductible plan accompanied by a health savings account into which I deposit tax-advantaged dollars-would continue to apply.

But then, in summer, my insurance agent telephoned and said Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield was requiring him to call his clients. He said some sort of Arkansas-specific regulatory permission had been granted by which I could keep my current plan with a tiny age adjustment, but only through 2014.

After that, he said, I’d have to convert by 2015. And, well, he said, based on current proposed rates for new plans-this was in summer-it looked like my monthly premium for the closest new facsimile would … well, triple.

Here was the thing: All that premium money I was saving by squirreling cash away in a health savings account was good for me, but not so much for the greater American collective. It’s sort of like holding out on Social Security and investing part of the money privately, which would never work for the program.

Obamacare mandated a few minimum benefits my plan didn’t meet. Beyond that, insurers were going to have to sustain new and steep costs for people with pre-existing conditions. And I was blessed with enough household income to make me ineligible for any government subsidies on my premiums.

So the actuaries had put their pencils to all that, and, well, for a man nearly 60, we’re sorry, but …

When rates came out Oct. 1 for the new exchange, a friendly Republican politician referred me to a page showing a bronze plan by which my rate would merely double. Maybe there’ll be something even better in the second exchange next October. Maybe it’ll be with a different carrier.

Still, here is the situation: My president, saying “period” and “no matter what,” assured me that, if I liked my current plan-and I do-I could keep it. And it turns out that he … told me something that wasn’t true.

Here’s what I’ll do: I simply won’t put anything aside for my personal HSA. I’ll let the insurance industry take that cash directly so it can better cover somebody worse off with a serious pre-existing condition. And my new plan will be improved in what it covers. If I get really sick, I’ll be better off.

So I sat around for weeks wondering if there was anyone else in my predicament-individually insured in a satisfactory low-cost plan, ineligible for any government subsidy, and confronted under Obamacare with forced conversion to a higher-cost plan.

And just when I was about to think I was an unlucky island, unique to the nation, it all hit the fan this week from California to North Carolina.

People and families supported by self-employment income of levels higher than those eligible for subsidies-but still decidedly middle class-began receiving notices. Their individually purchased plans were being canceled because they didn’t meet the minimum-benefit threshold of Obamacare. Their plans weren’t grandfathered under the law because there had been minor carrier-imposed changes in them since 2010. They would need to pay two to three times as much.

Now, all of a sudden, White House spokesman Jay Carney is getting hounded to reconcile the president’s comment about an absolute right to keep your insurance-period, no matter what-and the imminent and different reality. He’s hemming. He’s hawing. He’s saying, yeah, but some people are trying to hang on to substandard plans. And that’s true in many cases.

A Florida woman complaining that her monthly premium is going from $54 a month to nearly $600 actually has no real health insurance currently. Plans like hers can’t and shouldn’t qualify under the individual mandate. She doesn’t even have hospitalization.

And Carney is saying, correctly, that this claim of presidential untruth applies only to a narrow, well-winnowed segment of the population-those self-employed and individually insured and possessed of incomes exceeding subsidy levels.

Most corporate group plans, covering most Americans, are grandfathered in the existing form. This problem does not apply to those. It applies only to the relative few of us out here on our own.

I’m less irritated by the finances or the principle of the collective than by having smoke blown at me from the highest political level. I’m irritated that Republicans won’t cooperate to fix this law. And I’m suspicious that insurance carriers might be taking the opportunity to gouge just a bit.

Meanwhile, all you can do is hope for cost stabilization. And you can hope to goodness the politicians don’t further complicate your life by destroying your retirement savings with another debt-limit fiasco.

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John Brummett’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.