he can't uncancel them can he? >> no, he can't change that. there are insurance company that is go in and out of the market all the time. >> there is nothing prior to the affordable care. right now the most important thing for the president to do is to make sure that the website works so that people can go online and find other plan that is are going to be helpful and they now will have a choice of plans that will not be substandard. which brings us to what we have to get into. have you tried to get onto the obama care website? >> first of all, let me say, i'm not eligible for any type of subsidy and i have looked a little at the page. but i'm sort of caught between a rock and a hard place. sit a little more money than i can afford to pay any month. that decision may be paying the fine and not taking coverage at all. so i may gamble. >> so you are saying you may ignore the mandate and pay the penalty $95 in the first year and a guy who had health insurance is going to go without. >> yeah, that is a very good possibility chris. >> steve, what a

. >>> it's the insurance companies who will need to scramble to uncancel policies that were scrapped for failing to meet obama care standards. chief national correspondent jim angle examines whether that's possible. >> reporter: in hopes of avoiding a democratic revolt, president obama made an 11th hour effort to work his way out of a political corner by saying the insurance community should uncancel millions of canceled policies. >> so state insurance commissioners still have the power to decide what plans can and can't be sold in their states, but the bottom line is insurers can extend current plans that would otherwise be canceled into 2014. >> reporter: essentially delaying yet another part of the law. >> you know, it's interesting this administration has spent three years on launching healthcare.gov and six weeks into it it's still a mess. and they're now telling the insurance industry they have 31 days to turn this cancellation mess around. well, the president said he fumbled the football, which he did. but he's also moved the goal posts and changed the rules of the game. it is

but he can't uncancel their policies, can he? >> no, he can't change that. in fact, there are a lot of insurance companies that go in and out of the market all the time. there's nothing either prior to the affordable care act -- >> how can he help them? >> i'm not sure what is going to be offered. right now the most important thing for the president to do is to make sure that the website works so that people can actually go on-line and find other plans that are going to be helpful and they now will have a choice of plans that will not be substandard. >> which brings us to the last thing i want to get into, cade. have you tried to go on the obamacare website to see if there is something better there for you? or are you thinking -- >> first of all, let me say i'm not eligible for any type of subsidy. i have looked a little at the page. i'm sort of caught between a rock and a hard place because it is a little more money than i could afford to pay every month and i don't have a subsidy. i've got to make a tough decision and that decision may be paying the fine a

uncancel to get new policy go to the state to get the insurance commissioner who okay these policies.n the world could this possibly change things for the many americans who are out there freaked tonight because they are sick or in the middle of some medical procedure or care i don't get it? >> the issue frankly the bigger issue of obama care in general this thing is going to collapse and fail on its own. >> how is this -- this is an urgent situation for some people. >> exactly. look, you have right now the white house not even released the demographics of people that have signed up. seen the numbers signed up well short of what the white house said that they needed to be on target to do. they are not releasing the demographics. the people that desperately need insurance that are signing up. which is good. we want people that desperately need insurance to get insurance. the problem is to pay for that they are requesting young people to sign up who don't necessarily feel the need for it and that's where the cost is. >> they should release the demographics, secretary sebelius said in a

your insurance company and say are you unwilling to uncancel the policy they just canceled.ng is, they're pretty likely to say no. the insurance companies are making more money off the new policies than the old policies. you can imagine the administrative nightmare insurance companies have on their hands. they were told three years ago we want you to do this and they did it. now in the ninth inning, they're being told you can undo what you just did. >> never mind. >> just the administrative tasks required to do that are huge, no the to mention that you based all your pricing on plan a and now you're being told to go to plan b. >> for just another year. the point that shouldn't be missed is what those proponents of obama care will say. these aren't good plans anyway compared to what the new law depends. these are plans that had flaws in them. >> here's the big secret apparently nobody knew. people love bad plans. >> do they just love the plan they've had because they've had had it for a while they love the plan because they're cheap. if i've got a swiss cheese policy, tons of

in florida a number of insurance companies have said, yes, they will uncancel these plans. but a lot of them, again, have beeworried more about the practicality. they have to send more letters. they have to give people a choice of other plans or keeping their plans, going on the exchange. they basically spent most of this past year setting up new plabz, setting up their software networks. it would be extremely difficult for them to undo all of this in that short a period of time, even they were allowed to. they have to go back to state regulators if they're going to offer these plabz for another year, they would probably want to get rate adjustments. they have to go to regulators to get permission for that. all of this, again, is very, very difficult. gloold and is there a timetable here? is there a date by which they really have to make a decision? >> well, if they've canceled these plabz starting january 1, that would be the date. on the exchanges you have to purchase a plan by december 15 in order to have coverage begin january 1. we're really talking about that short a

for example, they uncancel a policy for somebody whose policy was just canceled. and then a year later they're suddenly going to have to cancel it all over again. these are publicly traded companies. they don't want to waste a whole lot of operational time fiddling around with all of this canceling and uncanceling. is that not a burden? >> no, it is. it's going to be pressure on the profitability line but not a huge amount of pressure. most of these firms, again, have a small individual membership book, meaning that it's not going to affect them as much. what you're going to see, a lot of the pain felt is going to be with the smaller regional insurers. the major insurers like united health care, wellpoint, aetna, cigna, humana. but, again, the exchanges themselves, this delay doesn't necessarily help them as much. what they want to see is membership grow. and that's if new lives come into the exchange market. >> listen, to me, what we just talked about and we look at basically people that have preexisting conditions, people that maybe are older, people that are ma

you have to uncancel them. >> right. >> and we'll see how the president will explain that.will be speaking momentarily. we'll see what he has to say. john avalon, let me get your analysis. the out lines of what the president wills going to say. it was broken here first on cnn by dana bash, our chief congressional correspondent. what do you think? >> look, wolf, i think the president is trying to adjust to facts on the ground and a lot of conservatives who are slamming this pivot aren't exactly rooting for the law to work in the first place. you have a rollout, which has been disastrous. you have people getting kicked off the plans, contrary to the president's promise. it's reasonable for the president, not just in political damage control but a matter of providing a safety net, to make an adjustment on the ground, improve the current situation. let's be real, he was doing this because he was facing a rebellion of democrats in the senate and house, folks who want to grandfather the people in who are getting kicked off these plans. it is a pivot by the president but also a co

and the citigroup analyst said the complexity of uncancelled millions of policies with six weeks left in the years staggering. a etna came out with a statement. itate regularalators would need to allow us to get the plans and secower appropriate rates. they are scrambling to put it back out there but not at the same price. this is the mess and they are holding the bag now. and they are not happy. kim with the wall street journal had a piece today and explained it nicely. here it is on the screen. it is highly unlikely most insurers can rip up business plans and rates and policies and tables and get state regularalator approval and reprogram their computers and cent outside notice and give consumers time to think and in one month that remains before the december 15th deadline. do you get the sense that the president and the people who are advising him in the white house are utterly naive when it comes on to what goes on in the insurance industry? >> i don't know if they are naive as maybe they don't care and don't want the blame for what is going on. what they are asking for is outrage

they also say for insurance companies who are dealing with cancellations and other things being uncancelled, the last thing they need is to deal with this october next year. the other issue is why not? if it makes sense to delay the 2015 enrollment, i asked jay carney, why not push back enrollment for anybody who wants to start obamacare on april 14th, you have to sign up by march 1st. >> why not extend enrollment for 2014, given the web site issues. >> the time period we're talking about here when it comes to enrollment in the next year is much shorter than the six-month enrollment period allotted for the initial year. as you know it extends from october 1st to march 31st. >> so, he is talking about 2014, steppeds from october -- extends from october until march, but given the problems with healthcare.gov, the six-month enrollment period may not be enough for people trying to log on and trying to enroll. >> that requires requires some m about the web site. the white house is talking about giving insurance companies some time. how about anymore advice for the billions of americans who are s

they can uncancel the canceled policies, if you can follow along with that, but they don't actually havey speaking with an expert who has consulted with the insurance industry in the past. he says he doesn't think they will unkanlsal them. heiciz says, look, they made mo money off the new policies, he doesn't think they'll go back and uncancel the ones they have canceled. >> that's troubling. what does it do to obama care's complex financial structure? and will we as customers find health care more expensive strictly as a result of the president's fix here? >> i want to be really clear who we are. if we is you and me, zoraida, chances are no, we're not going to see fallout because we're insured through our employer. however, people who are on the exchanges which is tens of millions of people, there's likelihood they're going to see higher premiums because of what the president did and because of the fumbled rollout in general. here's the way it works. the premiums for 2014, those are set. those are set in stone. they're done. however, the group, the insurance industry has come out today

insurance companies must agree to uncancel the plans and extend them another year if you're followingdent met with the industry executives friday in order to persuade them to go along. his capitulation on canceled policies heads off a legislative fix by congress, at least for now. >> i completely get how upsetting this can be for a lot of american, particularly after assurances they heard from me that if they had a plan that they liked, they could keep it. and to those americans, i hear you loud and clear. i said that i would do everything we can to fix this problem and today i'm offering an idea that will help do it. >> viewpoints now from a couple of xen commentators, maria cardona, democratic strategist, ben ferguson, conservative radio show host. i'm glad we have the two of you together. these are always lively conversations. i want to start with the president trying to fix one problem but have created another. because there are 45 days until this deadline. insurance companies have gone in one direction. now he's saying wait, you don't have to go there. maria, is the president cre

everybody needs >> president obama insist the affordable care act allows insurers to uncancel if theyhoose. consumer advocates say what you may not know is that insurance companies themselves demanded the rights to cancel california health insurance policies. >> what we have here is a situation where the insurance industry wanted to make it easier to raise premiums on con sunlers. >> consumer watch dog executive director carmen told me it was part of the negotiated deal with covered california and that many policyholders are being steered to pricey company plans with ordinary benefits. there's no incentive for insurers to continue both policies. >> we know their rates are going to go up because no one in california has the power to stop them. >> plus california insurance companies have already set next year's plans and rates says uc berkeley economist ben. >> you don't have a lot of time to actually shift at this point in time with six weeks left in the calendar year. >> handle says young healthier people will want to keep their chief plans skewing the pool covered california insured

now i'm uncanceled. it's a mess. it's a huge mess. i believe he had to do what he did and fix this because it was, read my lips new york city new tacks. it was new taxes. >> the issues the country faces what incentives to republicans have to work with president obama. the american public doesn't trust him as we saw with those polls. this is a complete disaster. why are they going to jump into the deep end with him at least after this. it's very difficult -- >> i was surprised he stood on stage as long as he did. he seems a wounded man today. >> this will get better. the fifth year is an awful year. a lot of pundits said it's true. a lot of piling on. some of his own supporters are demoralize. the website will get fixed, it will get better. obama care will be the law of the land and it will work. >> i like ending on the high note. thank you, governor. i'll see you tomorrow at noon eastern. andrea mitchell picks up our coverage starting now. >> thank you very much, alex. good day i'm aisndrea mitchell washington. if you like your plan y

here's the thing, it's hard to uncancel insurance. what's going to happen is effectively he's shifting blame. don't blame us if it can't get done. blame the insurance industry. blame your state insurance commissioner. already two insurance commissioners for washington state, i believe, and washington, d.c., both have said we're not going to be able to do it. we're going to go ahead and continue to enforce the affordable care act standards. what's interesting is the fact that even though what the president is doing is he is suspending eight complicated rules, keep in mind, this has been the law of the land, they have known for three years, insurance companies. they have done their due diligence. they have changed all the rules for the president. at the 11th hour because of political pressure, because you've got bill clinton, you've got daily headlines, stories of people who have lost insurance, the president for a political reason is changing things for one year. but i think people are going to see through this. >> in what business, wh

now they have 35 days for some new fix to uncancel insurance? and trying to move pieces around and get someone else to come in at this point is very, very difficult. >> all right. raihan and paul, both cnn political commentators. thank you for your insight. >> thank you. >>> and still to come on "new day" is comedian andy kauffman still alive? we will get down to the bottom of all of it next. >>> and san francisco becomes gotham city and that 5-year-old kid gets to save the day. >>> in just ten minutes, we will unwrap the automobile of the year. >> what does that look like to you? >> something sporty at least. it is something you will see only on cnn. keep it here. this is "new day saturday." as your life changes, fidelity is there for your personal economy, helping you readjust along the way, refocus as careers change and kids head off to college, and revisit your investments as retirement gets closer. wherever you are today, fidelity's guidance can help you fine-tune your personal economy. start today with a free one-on-one review of your reti

. >> it would take about six months to uncancel policies because of all the notifications and state regulationsre desperate to find something to reduce the chaos such as delaying the mandate or even the entire law for a year. >> if you delay the individual mandate, you must delay the mandated new coverages that begin on january 1, 2014. you can't mandate all of these new benefits and not have those healthy, young people come in the system to help pay for those benefits. >> obamacare program cannot sustain itself if we don't get lots and lots of healthy people signing up. and if the administration just success spends the mandate, they're guaranteeing they've got a financial catastrophe. >> it needs healthy people to pay more to pay the costs those older and sicker. without them the entire program would be in jeopardy which is why a major supporter of obamacare offered just one piece of advice on fox news sunday. >> the most important thing for the president to do is to make sure that the website works so that people can actually go online and find other plans that are going to be helpful and the

who got letters canceling their insurance could get now letters from their insurance companies uncancelling policies. so what is happening? and how much is it going to cost us? that is a can he request for james capretta, senior fellow at the ethics in public policy center. nice to have you with us. >> thank you. jenna: take bit by bit. bailout coming out of the recession brings up strong feelings. bailout, risk corridors, what are we talking about here? why are insurance companies getting any money from the government? >> this is a provision that said if an insurance company lost more than a normal amount, the target is like 3%, around their premium collections, if they lose more than that, then the government steps in and pays for some of the excess costs and if it is above 8%, the government pays in fact almost all of the excess costs. moreover -- jenna: why would the law be set up that way? why would the government want to do that? >> it was to induce the insurance companies to participate in the marketplace. they were trying to say insurers, don't worry, come into the marketplace. if y

and he said it's now we're going to look like the bad guys if we don't uncancel the policies that the president told us to put in there in the first place, we look like the bad guys. >> lots of pr -- bad pr all around. in the middle, of course, are these folks with these now-canceled policies. how difficult is it going to be for these people? >> you know, i think it's going to be tough for them. they're going to have to call their insurance companies and say you canceled by policy, but i liked it so can i have it back again? from what i'm hearing, a lot of kaerchls are going to say, no, we're not going to give it back. several reasons. one, again, an administrative mess to undo what they just did, and the newer policies are more expennive, many of them, so the insurance companies want to do this. i want to explain the 5% number on the screen. i want to be very clear this decision yesterday affects directly only 5% of americans. only 5% of americans buy insurance on their own without their employer. that's called the individual market. so this doesn't affect a ton of us. it's 5% of us.

it's hard to uncancel 5 million insurance policies which is the number already.te kicks in, the requirement that employers provide a more extensive and more expensive set of insurance, you're going to have millions more of people without insurance. so maybe democrats will join with us. >> that's the way we do it in our constitutional system. >> i understand. real quick before we go. come january and february when we have conversations all over again about the debt ceiling and everything else, is this going -- how much of the conversation is really going to be about this again? >> it's -- that's separate. i mean, the debt ceiling is a different issue. obama care is the central issue. we're going to try to minimize the pain. and over the long-term, we're headed in a different direction with competition, choice and lower prices for people who want to buy insurance. >> okay. senator alexander, thank you for joining us this morn>> thank yo. >> all right. horse is out of the barn. >> train out of the station. >> toothpaste out of the tube. all the king's horses, all th

it's very difficult to retroactively as jim mentioned uncancel something. regulatory permission to do it that's why you need these conversations? the state insurance commissioners? and the law itself has very defined poverty levels, or above that. how do you create a new subsidy for people who don't fall into that income category defined by law? it seems like a very difficult thing for you to handle outside of a legislative fix. would you acknowledge that? >> i think in general these issues are challenging which is hy it took a century of effort for it to come to fruition. the passage of comprehensive health insurance reform. and you described some of the general challenges that are out there. i would send you over to c.m.s. in their daily briefing for more details. i guess is they are going to ask that you wait for details about what the president's going to decide -- probably not send you over here, but simply say what can i tell you, i'm not going to discuss in any detail the options the president might be considering because when he makes a decision we'