Delaware Insurance Commissioner Karen Weldin Stewart announced Monday that carriers have agreed to renew health insurance policies of individuals.
That avoids the cancelation of policies that did not meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). Carriers have agreed to offer early renewals for current policies where the terms of coverage were to end on or before March 31, 2014.
President Barack Obama asked carriers to renew those policies, admitting that the administration did a poor job in dealing with issues related to those with individual coverage.
Under the Affordable Care Act, policies that do not offer minimum coverage in specified areas were to be canceled. That produced a firestorm among individual policyholders not getting insurance through a company and struggling to find new coverage through other methods such as the state website. In other cases, applicants were been scared away by problems with the federal website.
The minimum coverage requirements are designed to reduce chances of customers facing huge bills if a health condition was not covered. The lack of such coverage was not seen as a problem by many individuals and families in relatively good health.
Stewart stated that she is “very happy that the carriers have agreed to provide an early renewal opportunity for these policyholders.”
Consumers, who are affected by this agreement, must renew their policy on or before December 31, 2013. All policies with an effective date after January 1, 2014 must be in compliance with Delaware law. The carriers have indicated that individuals with questions regarding their policies should direct those questions to their agent or broker.
A lingering worry is that younger people will not sign up for insurance and will instead pay the fines for not being covered. That would drive rates for everyone and cause problems for solvency of the system that is based on having a large pool of consumers paying premiums.
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