(CNN) — If you like your health insurance plan, you might still be out of luck.
At least if you live in one of the seven states that have rejected the President Barack Obama’s proposal to allow health insurance companies to renew plans not in compliance with the Affordable Care Act.
The proposal was meant to help the President keep his promise to millions of Americans who have received cancellation notices from their insurance providers, and would allow companies to renew current plans for one year while people transition to the federal insurance exchange.
Because insurance is regulated differently in each state, the president’s plan first requires approval from governors and state insurance commissioners, many of whom have been hesitant to make changes for 2104 so late in the year.
On Tuesday, New York became the largest state to reject the proposal. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, told reporters during a press conference that he doesn’t think the President’s fix is necessary for New York.
“We haven’t had the kind of issues in New York in our exchange that they’ve had nationwide,” Cuomo said. “Our program has actually been working well, the website has been working well, and we’ve had actually very good success with our program so we don’t see any reason to change it now `because we’re not having those types of issues.”
New York joins Washington, Rhode Island, Vermont, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Indiana in rejecting the President’s proposal.
Before making his decision, Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton of Minnesota received a letter from the executive director of the Minnesota Council of Health Plans, who told him that the President’s fix “comes too late” and “will destabilize the market and result in higher premiums for Minnesotans.”
“Your letter makes clear that making the program changes offered by the President last week would be unworkable for your members,” Dayton replied, concluding that he would be directing his Commerce Department to continue to “with the plans made before last week’s announcement.”
Indiana Insurance Commissioner Stephen Robertson issued a scathing response to the proposal, saying that going along with the president’s plan “would seriously destabilize Indiana’s insurance market and create logistical chaos.”
More than 20 states have yet to make an official decision, while so far 21 states have either said they will implement the proposal, or already allowed insurance companies to renew plans prior to the president’s announcement.
The-CNN-Wire
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