Debunking Health Care Reform Myths - 8

MYTH 8: House bill would ban private individual insurance

CLAIM: House health care reform bill would "outlaw individual private coverage."

• An Investor's Business Daily editorial falsely claimed that the House bill includes "a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal." The editorial later stated that the "provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage." [IBD, 7/15/09]

• HANNITY: "The one thing that we do know in the health care bill is that it's gonna literally -- the bill says -- Investor's Business Daily had an article today -- and the bill says that if you don't have your insurance the year this legislation is implemented, you can't have a private insurance company. So that will end -- hang on -- that will end private insurance." [Hannity, 7/16/09]
  
  

REALITY: The bill does not "outlaw" private individual insurance. The provision to which the IBD editorial referred establishes the conditions under which existing private plans would be exempted from the requirement that they participate in the Health Insurance Exchange. Individual private health insurance plans that do not meet the "grandfather" conditions would still be available for purchase, but only through the exchange and subject to those regulations. As Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius noted, the assertion "that individuals would no longer be able to keep their personal coverage" is "just not accurate. It's not in any version of the House bill; it's not in the Senate bill." [MSNBC's Morning Joe, 7/22/09]

source: MediaMatters.org










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