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First of all, the plan that Barrette paid $54 a month for is barely health insurance at all. It’s part of a subset of insurance that Consumer Reports calls “junk health insurance” (and which even the company that sells it recommends that customers not rely solely upon) and it pays only $50 towards most of the services it covers. That’s it. If Dianne went to the doctor every week for a year, her plan would pay, at most, $2,600. Meanwhile, based on average office visit charges, Diane would pay about $5,600. She probably doesn’t go to the doctor every week, of course, which means her plan pays a lot less, while her premium buys her a lot less. If she goes to the doctor, say, six times in a year, she’s paid a $648 premium for the privilege of spending another $600 on office visits. The plan also pays up to $15 per prescription, which will get you a few milligrams of most prescription drugs. The one decent deal on her plan is that it covers 100% of in-network lab services.

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About 15 million people purchase health insurance policies on the individual market. That's about 5 percent of the population. When they do so, they typically purchase a 12-month contract with an insurance company. And when that contract runs out, both the individual and the insurance plan have an escape hatch. The individual can decide to no longer purchase the plan -- and the insurance company can decide to no longer offer the plan.

There are some restrictions on how insurance companies can terminate products. HIPAA, a health law passed in the 1990s, does require that insurance companies offer subscribers the opportunity to renew their policy, so long as they continue to pay monthly premiums. If they want to discontinue a subscriber's policy, the insurance plan must provide 90 days notice and "the option to purchase any other individual health insurance coverage currently being offered by the issuer for individuals in that market."

Some of these plans have stuck around for a little bit. The health law allowed plans that existed back in March 2010, when it became a law, to keep selling coverage. These are known as "grandfathered plans:" They don't meet the health law's requirements, but as long as they don't change much, insurers can keep offering them.

Insurance companies typically do like to change their insurance plans, making changes to cost-sharing or the benefits they offer. That means that grandfathered plans have disappeared.

These cancellations are, essentially, a lot of grandfathered plans exiting the insurance marketplace. From an insurance company's vantage point, grandfathered plans are a bit of a dead end: They can't enroll new subscribers and are really constrained in their ability to tweak the benefit package or cost-sharing structure. There's not a whole lot of business sense, for a managed care company, in maintaining a health plan that doesn't meet the health law's new requirements.

There are lots of insurance policies, especially on the individual market, that are really bare bones. Some argue they shouldn't even be called insurance coverage, because their coverage is too sparse to insure against financial ruin.

The whole idea of the insurance expansion isn't to get Americans to purchase anything called "insurance." It's to get them to purchase a plan that is relatively comprehensive and helps protect against financial ruin.

Of course, not everyone agrees with this; some contend that shoppers should be able to continue buying less robust insurance policies and have the option of taking on more financial risk.

Individuals with discontinued policies will have the option to purchase through the new insurance marketplaces (well, if they start working a little better) or they can do so outside the new marketplaces, pretty much like they have in years past.

Some people who are buying a bare-bones plan right now will likely see higher premiums under Obamacare. They'd be getting more benefits -- but paying more in premiums.

Some people will get financial help buying that more robust insurance; people who earn less than 400 percent of the federal poverty line (about $45,000 for an individual) can use a tax subsidy to purchase their plan. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/29/this-is-why
-obamacare-is-cancelling-some-peoples-insurance-plans/]

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