Obamacare did NOT force insurers to stop selling insurance outside of enrollment periods.

[pnwmom]

If your Facebook friend asks you, it's not true. Obamacare only mandated the enrollment periods for insurance sold on the Exchanges. Insurers who sell outside the exchanges are free to sell all year if they want.

However, they are no longer free to bar people or charge higher rates for people with preexisting conditions. Therefore, these insurers have decided that they will use the same enrollment periods as on the Exchanges.

They don't want every uninsured person who gets hit by a truck between now and the end of the year to come to them for health insurance.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=298975946

The next wide-open chance to sign up comes in November, when enrollment for 2015 begins in the government-run insurance marketplaces created by the health care law. Companies are following that schedule even for the plans they sell outside the federal and state exchanges.

The health care law allows insurers to keep selling all year. But it also creates the conditions prompting them to stop.

The law, which requires nearly all Americans to be insured or pay a fine, bans insurers from rejecting customers because of poor health. The companies say that makes it too risky to sell to individuals year-round.

"If you didn't have an open enrollment period, you would have people who would potentially enroll when they get sick and dis-enroll when they get better," said Chris Stenrud, spokesman for insurer Kaiser Permanente. "The only insured people would be sick people, which would make insurance unaffordable for everyone."

SNIP

[Jesus Malverde]

1. Your basically confirming the story.

It may not be the law but as you say an effect of the law. There is always a lag between when you sign up for insurance and the start of the plan. The meme that people could buy insurance and get coverage in an ambulance is not my experience. Insurance is NEVER retroactive, it starts on a future date. Even insurance provided by employers takes a month to kick in.

[pnwmom]

2. If you have a major medical event, like a cancer diagnosis, for example,

that will require years of treatment, then being able to get insurance in a month is still a huge advantage.

No, I'm not confirming the story. The ACA didn't require insurers to use common sense. They just did.

[joeglow3]

4. True. But if insurance companies didn't, it would unravel the ACA

One of the main things needed for the ACA to be successful is young, healthy people. Why would they (or anyone, for that matter), ever get health insurance until the month after they were diagnosed with something serious? This severely hampers that undermining of the ACA.

[Bandit]

3. I think you can still purchase insurance on the exchanges but just don't qualify for subsidies

To qualify for the subsidies you just enroll during the enrollment periods. Anyone can still buy Health Insurance..

[pnwmom]

5. No, that's incorrect. Other than the extensions some people have gotten,

the end of the enrollment period for the Federal and state exchanges was March 31, 2014. This has been well-publicized. What some people didn't know was that insurers outside of the exchange would follow suit.

However, I read recently that some insurers outside the exchange are keeping the doors open till April 15. But people shouldn't assume they can sign up for insurance after then -- not till next November, for insurance taking effect in January.

There are two exceptions, however. Medicaid eligible people can sign up anytime. And people with a "qualifying life event" -- a divorce, a new baby, loss of a job, a move to a new state, etc. -- can sign up anytime.