Betsy McCaughey: 30 Million Could Lose Healthcare Due to Obamacare

Saturday, 04 Oct 2014 10:54 PM By Todd Beamon

As many as 30 million Americans could lose their employer-sponsored healthcare at the end of the year because those plans will not meet the requirements of Obamacare, health policy expert Betsy McCaughey said on Saturday.

"Most people still get their health insurance through an employer," McCaughey, who also is a Newsmax columnist, told former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee on his Fox News program. "Thirty million people could lose their on-the-job coverage this year and be forced onto one of those exchanges.

"The plans that the employers bought in the small-group market are suddenly no longer eligible — and employers are going to be stuck with going to the very expensive Obamacare one-size-fits-all requirement or saying to their employees, 'I am sorry, you will have to get it somewhere else.'

"We're going to see a lot of that in the coming months," McCaughey said.

Under Obamacare, many companies with fewer than 50 employees have insurance plans that are set to expire this year. Those plans were purchased before the healthcare law took effect — and employer mandates for such businesses were delayed by President Barack Obama until Jan. 1, 2015.

However, as the plans expire, businesses will be required to provide plans that meet Obamacare's requirements — making them more expensive — or they can drop coverage, forcing employees to obtain coverage on their own through the exchanges.

For employers with 50 to 99 workers, they must provide coverage or pay a fine of $2,000 per employee. The requirement was delayed to January 2016 — after an earlier delay in July 2013, which had pushed back the mandate to January 2015.

But because those companies with fewer than 50 workers are most likely to drop coverage rather than pay the higher costs due to the Obamacare requirements, those Americans will most likely get "a very raw deal" when those policies expire at the end of the year, McCaughey told Huckabee.

"Rates will go up for quite a few people," she said.

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