More Obamacare fuckups

[Methais]

It was the only way to sell it. November 2014 should be very interesting, if the Republicans just let this thing eat itself.

They'll find a way to fuck it up. It's what they do.

[ClydeR]

Everyone now is clamoring about Affordable Care Act winners and losers. I am one of the losers.

My grievance is not political; all my energies are directed to enjoying life and staying alive, and I have no time for politics. For almost seven years I have fought and survived stage-4 gallbladder cancer, with a five-year survival rate of less than 2% after diagnosis. I am a determined fighter and extremely lucky. But this luck may have just run out: My affordable, lifesaving medical insurance policy has been canceled effective Dec. 31.

My choice is to get coverage through the government health exchange and lose access to my cancer doctors, or pay much more for insurance outside the exchange (the quotes average 40% to 50% more) for the privilege of starting over with an unfamiliar insurance company and impaired benefits.

Countless hours searching for non-exchange plans have uncovered nothing that compares well with my existing coverage. But the greatest source of frustration is Covered California, the state's Affordable Care Act health-insurance exchange and, by some reports, one of the best such exchanges in the country. After four weeks of researching plans on the website, talking directly to government exchange counselors, insurance companies and medical providers, my insurance broker and I are as confused as ever. Time is running out and we still don't have a clue how to best proceed.

Two things have been essential in my fight to survive stage-4 cancer. The first are doctors and health teams in California and Texas: at the medical center of the University of California, San Diego, and its Moores Cancer Center; Stanford University's Cancer Institute; and the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

The second element essential to my fight is a United Healthcare PPO (preferred provider organization) health-insurance policy.

Since March 2007 United Healthcare has paid $1.2 million to help keep me alive, and it has never once questioned any treatment or procedure recommended by my medical team. The company pays a fair price to the doctors and hospitals, on time, and is responsive to the emergency treatment requirements of late-stage cancer. Its caring people in the claims office have been readily available to talk to me and my providers.

But in January, United Healthcare sent me a letter announcing that they were pulling out of the individual California market. The company suggested I look to Covered California starting in October.

You would think it would be simple to find a health-exchange plan that allows me, living in San Diego, to continue to see my primary oncologist at Stanford University and my primary care doctors at the University of California, San Diego. Not so. UCSD has agreed to accept only one Covered California plan—a very restrictive Anthem EPO Plan. EPO stands for exclusive provider organization, which means the plan has a small network of doctors and facilities and no out-of-network coverage (as in a preferred-provider organization plan) except for emergencies. Stanford accepts an Anthem PPO plan but it is not available for purchase in San Diego (only Anthem HMO and EPO plans are available in San Diego).

So if I go with a health-exchange plan, I must choose between Stanford and UCSD. Stanford has kept me alive—but UCSD has provided emergency and local treatment support during wretched periods of this disease, and it is where my primary-care doctors are.
Before the Affordable Care Act, health-insurance policies could not be sold across state lines; now policies sold on the Affordable Care Act exchanges may not be offered across county lines.

What happened to the president's promise, "You can keep your health plan"? Or to the promise that "You can keep your doctor"? Thanks to the law, I have been forced to give up a world-class health plan. The exchange would force me to give up a world-class physician.
For a cancer patient, medical coverage is a matter of life and death. Take away people's ability to control their medical-coverage choices and they may die. I guess that's a highly effective way to control medical costs. Perhaps that's the point.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/...71710423780446

Was United Healthcare's decision to leave California related to Obamacare? The article somehow failed to say.

[cwolff]

Was United Healthcare's decision to leave California related to Obamacare? The article somehow failed to say.

Here's what they say about the change:

UnitedHealthcare announced it will no longer offer individual insurance plans after the end of the year. It will focus instead on its core business of group plans for large and small employers.

"Our individual business in California has always been relatively small and we currently serve less than 8,000 individual customers across the state," the company said in a statement. "Over the years, it has become more difficult to administer these plans in a cost-effective way for our members in California."

[ClydeR]

They'll find a way to fuck it up. It's what they do.

No, you're wrong about that. We're going to shut down the government again in January. That will put an end to Obamacare once and for all.

[Methais]

[ClydeR]

Here's what they say about the change:

If United Healthcare's departure from California was really unrelated to Obamacare, then what would have happened to this person if Obama had not imposed Obamacare on the whole country? Would one of the other insurance companies still in California have taken over the coverage? I think they would have, becuase in the absence of oppressive government regulation, insurance companies usually do the right thing for sick people.

[cwolff]

Here's some good news on ACA. According to Jonathan Gruber http://economics.mit.edu/faculty/gruberj who worked on Romneycare and Obamacare, the idea that people are losing their insurance is overblown.

Gruber broke down the A.C.A. “winners” and “losers” for me. About eighty per cent of Americans are more or less left alone by the health-care act—largely people who have health insurance through their employers. About fourteen per cent of Americans are clear winners: they are currently uninsured and will have access to an affordable insurance policy under the A.C.A.

But much of the current controversy involves the six per cent of Americans who buy their own health care on the individual market, which the A.C.A. has dramatically reformed. Gruber argued that half of these people (three per cent of all Americans) will have little change to their polices. “They have to buy new plans, but they will be pretty similar to what they had before,” he said. “It will essentially be relabeling.”

The other half, however, also three per cent of the population, will have to buy a new product that complies with the A.C.A.’s more stringent requirements for individual plans. A significant portion of these roughly nine million Americans will be forced to buy a new insurance policy with higher premiums than they currently pay. The primary reason for the increased cost is that the A.C.A. bans any plan that would require a people who get sick to pay medical fees greater than six thousand dollars per year. In other words, this was a deliberate policy decision that the White House and Congress made to raise the quality—and thus the premiums—of insurance policies at the bottom end of the individual market.

[Latrinsorm]

They'll find a way to fuck it up. It's what they do.

Is it that the Republicans fail to capitalize or that the Democrats aren't such screw-ups after all?

[Warriorbird]

If United Healthcare's departure from California was really unrelated to Obamacare, then what would have happened to this person if Obama had not imposed Obamacare on the whole country? Would one of the other insurance companies still in California have taken over the coverage? I think they would have, becuase in the absence of oppressive government regulation, insurance companies usually do the right thing for sick people.

This is good stuff. Keep it up.

[AnticorRifling]

Propaganda isn't how I'd judge the validity of anything. This isn't to garner support, it's to attempt to tank the system to make more people have trouble. It's as disengenous as that MSNBC article people were fussing at cwolff for posting.

Your brother didn't have insurance to begin with. Society would've paid for it if he had to go to the emergency room in a catastrophic situation.

My sister might not have been successful founding her new small business if she'd been forced off of my Mom and Dad's coverage. Were my Mother and Father not employed my Mother would be unable to buy coverage due to preexisting conditions. It's not about comparing stories. This on the surface looks like the individual "needed" two highly specialized plans to get care and now won't get any, yet she'll actually still get a very highly specialized plan and neither of the two prior plans addressed her needs.

It's a clever appeal to the emotions to suggest that people shouldn't support something that will help quite a lot of people unless they can successfully convince people to not take advantage of it.

Really though, most of the people who read wsj don't actually want to pay for your brother's emergency room visit, but they're buying into this for political reasons because it's Obama.

We've been over this before, just because you don't agree with it doesn't make it propaganda.