SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The board overseeing California's health insurance exchange voted unanimously Thursday to stick with its year-end deadline of phasing out more than 1 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 insurancemarketplaces. Those policies are being ended because they do meet the more extensive requirements for essential benefits under the federal Affordable Care Act.

"There's no way to make the federal law work without this transition to ACA-compliant plans," board member Susan Kennedy said. "Delaying the transition isn't going to help anyone; it just delays the problems. I actually think that it's going to make a bad situation worse if we complicate it further."