The House of Representatives passed today H.R. 3350, the Keep Your Health Plan Act, by a bipartisan vote of 261 -157. Congressman Chris Gibson (NY-19) voted in support of the legislation, which upholds the promise President Barack Obama and then Speaker Nancy Pelosi made that under the Affordable Care Act, if you liked your health insurance plan, you could keep it.
"As I've said all along, the Affordable Care Act, which had the right goals of lowering health care costs and increasing access to quality care, would never deliver on these promises. One of these tenets was that my constituents, and Americans across the country, would be able to keep their current health insurance if they liked it. That has turned out to be a false promise, and today's legislation would fix that -- allowing insurance companies to continue to offer current plans," said Congressman Chris Gibson.
"Despite his statement to the contrary yesterday, President Obama cannot change his law by executive fiat -- the solution must be legislative for it to have any meaning, and today's bipartisan vote demonstrates the support of Congress for this fix. Moving forward, my preferred solution is to replace the Affordable Care Act -- keeping parts we can all support -- and enact legislation that will drive down costs and increase access. In the absence of that, we should at a minimum ensure the law is not forced on Americans with a broken website, unfair applicability, and direct promises that are not being kept," continued Congressman Gibson.
The Keep Your Health Plan Act allows providers to continue to offer in 2014 those health insurance plans in effect in the individual market as of January 1, 2013. The plans will be treated as grandfathered health plans for purposes of Section 1501(b). According to the Associated Press, 3.5 million people on the individual insurance market have already seen their health plan cancelled.