The board overseeing California’s health insurance exchange voted unanimously yesterday to stick with its current year-end deadline of phasing out more than one million individual health insurance policies that fail to meet requirements of the federal health care overhaul, turning aside a plea by President Barack Obama to let those policies continue. In voting 5-0, Covered California board members said allowing the older polices to continue would undermine the new insurance marketplaces. Those policies are being ended because they do not meet the more extensive requirements for essential benefits under the federal Affordable Care Act.
