Not long after I was notified that I would no longer be covered by the health plan I had for 52 years, provided by my employer, now former employer, I sent the following mail to Merkley,
Wyden, and DeFazio. Fallowing my mail is Merkleys response in which he does not even address the main question.
Senator,
How can it be when you voted for this ACA that you didn't know that people covered by their employer
or former employer in the case of retirees, would be dropped by the employer?
The law contains a Tax on the employers for each person that they would continue to cover.
Why was this tax implemented? It can not be to obtain revenue to cover other people.
If it was, that was very dumb as well as totally unfair to the employers as well as the employees and retirees.
It sure looks to me like the tax was intended to encourage employers to drop retirees and spouses to force more people into the exchanges.
You fellas really deserve a just reward for this plan.
Barrack Obama deserves his too for telling us at least 50 times that "If you like your current healthcare
You can Keep it!" A Complete lie
MarAzul
This is Merkley's reply with no mention of the question he was asked to address.
Dear MarAzul,
Thank you for contacting me to express your concerns about ongoing implementation of the health care reform law, also called the Affordable Care Act. I share your frustration with the unacceptable dysfunction and delays and I appreciate hearing from you.
Despite these challenges, I support the Affordable Care Act because it represents a significant improvement on a broken system that, before the Affordable Care Act, allowed insurance companies to subject almost all Oregonians to constantly increasing insurance prices, kicked many off their coverage when they needed it most, and left hundreds of thousands of Oregonians without health insurance at all. We need to fix the problems, and I will work with anyone from either party to do so, but we can't go back to the broken health care system that failed so many Oregonians.
I continue to be extraordinarily frustrated by the continuing technical problems with enrollment on the state and federal exchange websites, and concerned that these problems will prevent many people from enrolling in plans in time for their coverage to start on January 1, 2014. No one should experience a gap in coverage due to technological factors outside of their control. To help people potentially affected by the delay in insurance enrollment, I have called for a change to allow Oregonians to get coverage effective on January 1, 2014, even if they sign up late in January.
One of the central goals of the Affordable Care Act was to expand access to high quality health insurance plans for those who did not like what they had or did not have any options at all, while allowing those who did like their insurance plan to keep it. By allowing consumers this choice, the law gave potentially affected consumers the power to decide whether they wanted to switch plans or keep the plan they had. Today, because insurance companies have changed their plans over the past few years to maximize profits, most of the plans that would have been grandfathered are no longer offered by insurance companies. At the same time, insurance companies signed people up for new or changed plans that didn't meet the basic consumer protections in the Affordable Care Act, and didn't warn people that their plan would eventually be discontinued. As a result, many consumers in Oregon and across the country don't have the choice to keep their insurance plan because it wasn't offered in 2010 when the Affordable Care Act became law.
I believe it's unfair to make consumers pay the price for their insurance company deny
Jeffrey A. Merkley
United States Senator
It appears the man had and has no clue how insurance works or that the majority of Americans that had health Care coverage were provided such by employers with self insured plans.
I can't vote for a man this clueless about such a major issue. Destroying what many people had for the sake of a few that do not is mindlessly ignorant The consequences this are still incomplete, with more pain to follow.
