[quote=SK in CV]
Every plan was grandfathered. No plan had to be cancelled because of Obamacare. Not a single one. Fact is, almost no insurance plans ever survived more than 2 years. Insurance companies constantly change them. And that goes for both the individual market and the employer market.
[/quote]

While technically true no plan had to be canceled, the authors of the bill knew they would be. Insurance providers typically treat their plans as 12 month contracts and make changes every year. If the insurance companies keep a grandfathered plan they couldn’t make any changes to out of pocket costs, deductibles, what was covered, etc. Their new plans were required to insure people with pre-existing conditions and those people were obviously going to be net beneficiaries, so they needed to get as many healthy people into those plans that they could. It made financial sense to cancel those old plans. The government and CA insurance regulators wanted those plans canceled. It was obviously the goal of the law to get everybody on full coverage type plans. By definition they were going to cost more because they included coverage for more things, and they were required to include people with pre-existing conditions.