Though the White House made many guarantees in the days prior to and following the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that consumers would be able to keep their current health plans in 2014 if they liked them, nearly a third of all Americans who don't have employee benefits may wind up losing their policies come next year, according to a recent assessment made by a noted health care economist.
Christopher Conover, a research scholar at the Center for Health Policy and Inequalities Research at Duke University, told politically conservative news and opinion website The Daily Caller that as many as 129 million consumers in the individual market will likely "not be able to keep" their present plans. This includes those who have already lost their plans as well as those who will lose them, all because the components of their policies don't comply fully with the essential benefits provision of the ACA.
This latest development comes in the wake of hundreds of thousands of individuals receiving letters from their providers, informing them of the discrepancy between what the health care law requires and what their plans include.
Critics of the ACA have pointed to comments made by President Barack Obama, informing the American people on numerous occasions that individuals who already have health coverage would be grandfathered in once the ACA went into full effect. Obama has since attempted to clarify his prior statements.
"If you had or have one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law and you really like that plan, what we said was, you could keep it if hasn't changed since the law's passed," said Obama.
Jay Carney, White House press secretary, told White House correspondents that Obama's clarification was in reference to the content of the law itself.
