After Obama Meeting, Insurers Question Plan’s Workability

Gabriella Demczuk/The New York Times

President Obama met Friday with executives of more than a dozen of the nation's largest health insurance companies in the Roosevelt Room at the White House.

A day after they were caught off guard by President Obama's proposal to prevent cancellation of insurance policies for millions of Americans, top executives of some of the biggest insurance companies emerged from a meeting at the White House on Friday, expressing mixed feelings about whether the idea could work in every state.

The hastily called meeting was an attempt by the White House to address the growing frustration of the nation's insurers over the administration's fumbling of the health care law. It came just a day after the president announced on television that insurers could now continue coverage for people whose policies were being canceled because they did not meet the new law's standards.

The cancellations had left the president vulnerable to assertions that he had gone back on an often-repeated promise that consumers could keep their current plans if they were happy with them.

Mr. Obama met with chief executives from more than a dozen of the nation's largest companies in the Roosevelt Room for more than an hour in a session that insurers said was wide-ranging. Other issues discussed included a suggestion being floated by some in the insurance industry that they be allowed to enroll people directly, rather than through HealthCare.gov, the government's troubled website. But the insurers said the president had agreed that fixing the site's remaining problems was a critical priority.

The insurers, many of whom expressed anger that the president had not consulted them before Thursday's announcement, said they had come away from the meeting willing to work with the White House on the cancellation issue and still protect the financial viability of the new insurance marketplaces. They did not discuss in detail how the president's goal might be achieved.

The participants included executives of WellPoint, Aetna, Cigna, Humana and Kaiser Permanente, as well as several nonprofit Blue Cross plans.

After the meeting, Karen Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry trade group, said only that it had been "very productive."

Under the White House proposal, which would affect the 10 million or so people who already have individual policies, insurers would no longer have to cancel policies for 2014 that failed to meet the Affordable Care Act's standards. The final decision on whether to allow insurers to continue selling those plans is up to insurance regulators in each state.

At the meeting, insurers emphasized their concerns that the president's proposal could actually lead to higher insurance prices in 2015 and beyond by skewing the mix of customers in the new insurance marketplace. In other words, people who now have cheaper insurance — because their plans have fewer benefits — may still choose to keep them, rather than buying the new policies. Generally, those people are thought to be younger and healthier.

Insurers emphasized that the new insurance markets would need to have a balanced mix of people, including the young and healthy. They and White House officials discussed ways to address the insurers' concerns that the balance would be disrupted if more people than expected kept their old coverage throughout the year as well.

The White House acknowledged that making the changes the president was suggesting would be challenging. "We believe that insurers certainly can generate letters, just like they did already, to their customers that advise them of this new opportunity if they choose to make that opportunity available to them, and if there is time to do that," said the White House spokesman, Jay Carney. "So we're obviously going to be working with insurers and working with states on this matter. But we believe there is time, and we believe it's a solution to a problem that has clearly arisen that the president wants addressed."

Even if the insurance industry and the president find common ground, thousands of consumers may still not be able to renew their old policies.

Insurance policies are typically policed by the states, which will have a powerful voice in how all of this is resolved.

Michael Shear contributed reporting.

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