Florida Blue’s cancellation of 300,000 individual health-insurance policies in the state has led many to accuse President Obama of deliberately misleading the public when he said that if people liked their insurance policies, they could keep them, the Fiscal Times reports.
NBC News caused an uproar in Washington with a report that at least 50 percent of the 14 million Americans who carry individual policies will receive cancellations by the end of the year, and that the administration knew that would happen.
As Politico reports, the White House disputed many parts of the report, saying that individual coverage is in a continual churn so this is nothing new.
Over the weekend, Blue’s chairman Patrick Geraghty said the company isn’t “cutting people -- we’re transitioning” them to better plans that meet the rules of the Affordable Care Act.
In other news about Florida Blue, the state’s largest insurer has agreed to be anchor tenant in a science-business incubator -- an “Innovation Center” -- in Medical City at Lake Nona, near Orlando, chairman Pat Geraghty said recently. The insurer says its Collaborative Imagination Center should open in 2015, the Orlando Sentinel reported.
That led the Jacksonville Business Journal to ask why Florida Blue didn’t choose its home city for the project. Renee Finley, vice president for innovation and market intelligence, replied that Orlando is years ahead of Jacksonville in bringing its health-industry players together for such a project, and besides, it’s centrally located.