Quote:
About 80,000 Louisiana residents will see their health insurance policies canceled in 2014 because they don’t meet new federal health-care standards, the state’s insurance commissioner said Monday.
Jim Donelon said the Department of Insurance collected the information from health insurance providers last week in response to numerous requests for an estimate.
The figure could account for close to half of the 165,000 people in Louisiana who hold individual health insurance plans that they pay for without the help of an employer or the government.
“These people were obviously satisfied with their insurance,” Donelon said, “and I hope that they don’t drop out of the market.”
80,000 out of 165,000 is 48.5 percent. This law has blown away 48.5 percent of the individual insurance market in Louisiana. Those people are now stuck without insurance next year, subject to penalties by the IRS (though according to the law they should not be, since Louisiana didn’t establish a state insurance exchange) for not having insurance and unable to buy insurance, even at higher rates or with larger deductibles than they had before Obama and Mary Landrieu came along, because of the stupid half-billion dollar website they built that doesn’t work.
No, 80,000 is not the 800,000 in New Jersey, the 300,000 in Florida or the 250,000 in California who have lost their policies. But it’s a sizable number. It’s three percent of the state’s registered voters.