TRENTON, N.J. – New Jersey officials were forced to cancel health  insurance policies for thousands of young students because a unique program for low-cost coverage didn’t comply with the requirements of Obamacare.

About 1,800 New Jersey families received letters last week informing them that the low-cost health plan for their children through FamilyCare Advantage no longer exists. Parents using the plan don’t qualify for Medicaid but also don’t earn enough to purchase their own policies, Newsmax reports.

“This is enormously disappointing,” New Jersey state Sen. Joseph Vitale, who helped create the FamilyCare program, told NJ.com. “It was $5 for doctor visits, $1 for pharmacy, and no deductable or cost sharing.”

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The medical, dental, and vision coverage through Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey cost families only $144 a month, and was hailed as a model for providing quality affordable insurance coverage for children when it was implemented six years ago, NJ.com reports.

The plan, however, didn’t meet the areas of coverage mandated by Obamacare and is now illegal, Newsmax reports.

“Without having that safety net, if an illness arises, we will probably take him to the ER,” parent Bob Miotla told NJ.com.

Miotla said the cancelation letter made him “extremely angry,” according to the news site.

NJ.com reports that a total of about 800,000 New Jersey residents who bought their health insurance programs through their employers or on the individual market do not meet the new mandates in Obamacare.

President Obama urged states in such situations to keep those polices for a year, but New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie allowed the state’s insurance companies to determine if that was feasible.

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Horizon, which administers the FamilyCare Advantage plan, and the state’s other insurance companies rejected the President’s suggestion due to cost considerations

“The NJ FamilyCare Advantage plan does not meet all ACA requirements and would have had to be significantly changed. This would have increased considerably the premium for the plan,” Horizon spokesman Tom Vincz told NJ.com.

Sen. Vitale said the death of NJ FamilyCare means many New Jersey families won’t get the type of bargain for health coverage for their children as they did before.

“Now people will have to go on the exchange, where the premiums are reasonable but the deductibles are enormous,” he told NJ.com. “The Affordable Care Act is costing families a lot more than it should.”