Claim: President Obama issued a 'gag order' on insurance rates for 2015 until after the midterm elections.
Example: [Collected via e-mail, November 2014]
Barack Obama has issued a GAG ORDER to the health insurance industry instructing them not to disclose their January 2015 health
insurance rates until after the
Origins: Late on
which claimed President Barack Obama issued a "gag order" on insurance companies prohibiting them from releasing 2015 insurance rates until the 2014 midterm elections had concluded. The claim came hours before polls officially opened for voting in jurisdictions across the United States.
According to the blog, several sources confirmed a conspiracy among Democrats was underway to conceal what are presumably massive health insurance rate hikes in 2015. Quoting blogger Warner Todd Huston, the report stated "Barack Obama is again playing political games with our health insurance industry," and the President "turned in another underhanded move against it by forcing insurance carriers, brokers and agents to withhold their 2015 prices until after the 2014 midterm elections are over all so that the news of higher prices won't hurt Democrats on Election Day":
There is also something different with these cancellations, something that has never happened before in the healthcare insurance industry. Past practice has always been that the next year's new rates are released
Before we get into that, though, millions of new cancellations will be hitting on
The article cited the same source twice (making it seem as if the claim came from more than one place) and the initial claim stemmed from a the personal blog of a health insurance broker who wrote:
This year, for the first time in 20 years I can not even quote a replacement product because Barack Obama has issued a GAG ORDER to the health insurance industry instructing them not to disclose their January 2015 health insurance rates until after the
It's worth noting the claims bear a striking resemblance to a similar (false) claim that 2015 Medicare rates had been deliberately withheld from Medicare enrollees until the elections had concluded. In that case, Medicare rates were released following the printing of the 2015 Medicare handbook but were made widely available well in advance of the 2014 midterm elections. Contrary to the rumor, 2015 Medicare rates were essentially the same as those for 2014.
In this case, the original claim stemmed from an opinion piece from USA Today penned by health insurance pundit Bob Laszewski and published on
Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that the administration sent an email to the insurance companies participating in Obamacare telling them to keep their mouths shut about the testing of the new health law's enrollment system saying, that unlike last year, they would require "all testers (the insurance companies) to acknowledge the confidentiality of this process" before they would be allowed to participate. The administration reminded insurers that their confidentiality agreement with the Obama administration means that insurance executives "will not use, disclose, post to a public forum, or in any way share Test Data with any person or entity, included but not limited to media ..." This includes any "results of this testing exercise and any information describing or otherwise relating to the performance or functionality" of the Obamacare enrollment and eligibility system.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report to which that editorial referred was published on
The new confidentiality agreement won't just cover the industry data that will be included in the marketplace's testing environment. It also includes "results of this testing exercise and any information describing or otherwise relating to the performance or functionality" of HealthCare.gov. A spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans said, the insurers "engaged in testing are focused on avoiding the unfortunate experience that consumers faced last year and nothing more."
The email alert spells out exactly what is expected of participants:
Clearly there was no industry-wide "gag order" that precluded all insurers from disclosing their 2015 health insurance rates prior to the 2014 midterm elections, as a number of insurance companies sent out printed materials to customers listing those future rates well before the early November election date.
Also at issue was the fact that back in November 2013, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) opted to push the start of the 2015 enrollment period for federal health-care exchanges back from mid-October 2014 to mid-November 2014, a move some critics cited as an attempt to prevent bad news about rate increases from coming out prior to the
It would also give customers an extra week to review their options, extending the open-enrollment period by one week to two full months. Republicans were quick to pounce on the change, accusing the administration of a blatantly political effort to delay bad news that might result from the next round of open enrollment until after the election. The delay means Americans might not hear about potential rate increases until after the election, rather than in the weeks before.
The change is aimed at giving insurance companies who offer plans on the exchanges more time to review 2014 enrollments and set rates for the 2015 enrollment period.
The shift in the open enrollment period for 2015 meant that many consumers who obtain insurance through the federal exchanges might not have looked for or been aware of newer rates (and potential rate increases) until after the 2014
Last updated: 4 November 2014