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Local Experts Report No Complaints of Cancellations

While there is news of people around the country being dropped from their private insurance plans, Gay Pustaver, executive director of Money Management Counselors powered by FISC, said she isn’t aware of a local problem.

“I haven’t had a single person come in and say they’ve been dropped,” she said. “I personally got a letter from my insurance company saying ‘don’t worry, everything’s going to stay the same.’”

The Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health policy research center, reported that hundreds of thousands of people were dropped from their private insurance plans because the plans don’t cover the things the Affordable Care Act now requires, like the 10 essential benefits

Brian Stephens, revenue cycle director for Ministry Door County Medical Center (MDCMC), said some changes could occur with employer provided plans if. Employers may find it better to drop their employees’ plans in order to save cost, but that might turn out to be a good thing for employees.

“A lot of the times it’s the smaller employers who are only able to offer very high deductible, high premium plans,” he said. “Honestly if they turn around and give the employee the money they were spending on those plans then that person would be better off in the exchange market.”

So if an employer spent $800 on each employee and could only offer them a high-deductible plan, it might be better to give each employee $600 and allow them to choose their own plan

“Then the employer saves $200 and the employee ends up with a better plan for $600,” Stephens said.

Healthcare.gov

After over a month of trouble with the website created to let people and employers sign up for health care plans, Stephens said healthcare.gov is finally running smoothly. Other MDCMC counselors have worked with clients and made it all the way through the process with no website trouble.

“[The website trouble was] just bad PR,” Stephens said. “The real challenge is getting the insurance companies to offer affordable insurance products, and that’s happened. It’s just that because of the website issues people haven’t been able to get to them yet. Now they should be able to. I just think it looks bad for the Obama Administration and to people who didn’t like the Affordable Care Act, but ultimately it seems the result is going to be the same.”