Obamacare Insurance Cancellations: President ‘Grossly Misled’ Public, Dem Congressman Says [Video]

President Obama was “grossly misleading” the American public about the ability to keep their existing healthcare insurance under Obamacare.

That was the assessment of Rep. Kurt Schrader, a Democrat from Oregon who voted for Obamacare, a.k.a. the Affordable Care Act. Rep. Schrader has represented the state’s 5th Congressional District since 2009. Reportedly, up until very recently, however, Schrader’s website said that “if you are insured and are happy with your current coverage, nothing changes.”

President Obama repeatedly declared that “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan” when he was selling healthcare reform via the Affordable Care Act to the American people, but this is not is not holding true for those who buy their insurance directly on the individual market. Millions of them across the country have received cancellations notices, about one million in the state of California alone.

Obamacare on a one-size-fits-all basis requires insurers to cover 10 so-called essential benefits which rules out many cafeteria/catastrophic plans that many Americans prefer in the context of their budget and/or income. As a result, consumers will be compelled pay for additional coverage that they neither want nor need and/or which may be inappropriate for their age or gender. To make matters worse, the federal exchange, healthcare.gov, is still broken, preventing many replacement-insurance seekers from reviewing new options.

About the controversy over Obamacare-prompted cancelled coverage, Congressman Schrader said in an interview among other things (see embed above) that “I think the president was grossly misleading to the American public. I know right away as a veterinarian, I have my own business, that my policies got cancelled even before the Affordable Care Act. I know that I would change policies on a regular basis, trying to find the best deal for myself and my employees. But a lot of Americans, a lot of Oregonians, have stayed with the same policy for a number of years and are shocked that their policy got cancelled.”

Continued Schrader: “So I think the president saying you could stay with it and not being honest that a lot of these policies were going to get cancelled was grossly misleading to the American public and is causing added stress and added strife as we go through a really difficult time with healthcare.”

The Obama administration, along with ACA proponents, claims that only five percent of the American population will be affected by cancellations of so-called substandard plans, but that does not take into consideration the fact that the employer mandate was postponed for one year. Millions more workers will soon encounter big changes in their employer-provided plans as 2015 approaches, and some businesses have already transitioned staffers to public or private exchanges in advance of the Obamacare standards kicking in.

According to Forbes, many small businesses (less than 50 workers) who provide health insurance coverage to their workers even though it is not required under Obamacare wwill soon find their plans eliminated too. “Starting in October 2014, many employees of small businesses will start getting the same notices that are now being mailed to individuals, informing that their existing health plans are also being cancelled. These small businesses will be faced with a bleak choice. Find another policy that’s compliant with Obamacare, but also more costly. Or put their employees into the Obamacare exchange.”

Speaking on FNC, Obamacare supporter and Democrat Kirsten Powers commented that “My blood pressure goes up every time they say that they’re protecting us from substandard health insurance plans. There is nothing to support what they’re saying. I have talked to about how I’m losing my health insurance. If I want to keep the same health insurance, it’s going to cost twice as much. There’s nothing substandard about my plan. All of the things they say that are not in my plan are in my plan. All of the things they have listed — there’s no explanation for doubling my premiums other than the fact that it’s subsidizing other people. They need to be honest about that.”

Has Obamacare affected your insurance coverage?