From the new reporting site here:
As of the end of February 2011, a total of 1040 one-year waivers have been granted. This update includes 126 new approvals. Key facts about annual limits waivers:
Of all the waivers granted to date, the vast majority – more than 95 percent of all waivers – were granted to health plans that are employment-related. These include self-insured employer health plans, health reimbursement arrangements, collectively-bargained multi-employer plans, and health plans sold by issuers to fully-insured employers. The links below contain descriptions of these and other types of entities receiving waivers.
The number of waivers processed each month continues to decline. After granting over 500 waivers in December (an increase related to the fact that December 1 was the final day to apply for a waiver for a plan or policy year that begins on January 1, as many plans do), HHS granted less than 200 waivers in January, and 126 in February.
The number of enrollees in plans with annual limits waivers is 2.62 million, representing less than 2 percent of all Americans who have private health insurance today.
The old site listed the waivers sequentially (here), with the cumulative total of persons affected clearly shown. Now you have to cull the data from no less than 7 separate links.
In less than three months we've gone from 222 waivers in December 2010 to 1,040 waivers in early March 2011, and from 1.5 million affected to 2.6 million.
So we're told the number of waivers processed is declining even though the total waivers granted continues to climb dramatically, and the new website makes the data more difficult to retrieve and entitles it "promoting transparency."
Up is down, wrong is right, night is day. Obama isn't a Bolshevik. He is not an ideologue.
