"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.-Wes
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."
Wednesday, November 06, 2013
What Our Politicians Should Fear the Most
... is when patients start telling their real life stories:
What a frightening story, not spinned by any high paid shill for either side. This is a REAL PERSON and I am terrified for her. Remember when Nancy Pelosi held the huge book in her hands and said we'll read it later? Later is now. Maybe Nancy can help this woman, even though she isn't in Nancy's district. Perhaps Nancy can pay her bills... might be cheaper than Hualalai.
ReplyDeleteAs Killary/Hitlary would say, 'what difference does it make?'
ReplyDeleteWait until the sheeple figure out that their 'good obama insurance' has outrageous deductibles, copays and coinsurance.
My Medicare patients are now reluctant to see me in the office since our practice was taken over by the hospital. The hospital charges a 'facility fee' which in some cases is more than my bill. This facility fee is not covered by insurance. This is just one example of how Medicare patients are losing access to care.
Don't get me started on Medicare copays when procedures are completed as an 'outpatient'....
"now policies sold on the Affordable Care Act exchanges may not be offered across county lines"
ReplyDeleteAbsolute lie. Rates may vary from county to county (as they always have), but insurers still sell policies state-wide as before.
The true reason why this woman is loosing her health insurance is that United is pulling the plug on individual policies in California: they only had about 8000 enrollees and were loosing their shirts. Pure free market economics.
There are lots of problems with Obamacare, but spreading this kind of false information doesn't do anyone any good. You're better than this, Dr. Wes.
"My Medicare patients are now reluctant to see me in the office since our practice was taken over by the hospital. The hospital charges a 'facility fee' which in some cases is more than my bill. This facility fee is not covered by insurance. This is just one example of how Medicare patients are losing access to care."
ReplyDeleteAnd somehow this is a problem with Medicare/Obamacare?
Hell no. The problem is that you sold your practice to a hospital run by a bunch of greedy con artists.
Take a little personal responsibility.
On the other side of the coin, I am sure there will be many examples of individuals who will be getting insurance for the first time, and even more examples of those who were effectively locked out of the market previously due to pre-existing conditions who can now get insurance.
ReplyDeleteCan everyone just hold their rhetoric till we see what occurs over the next several months? There is going to be, without doubt, some winners and losers under health care reform. My guess is there will be alot more winners in the longer run, but only time will tell.
interesting. i just renewed our office policy (5 person design firm) with the exact same coverage that we had last year at a lower price than we paid last year. anecdotal "evidence" can be so misleading.
ReplyDeleteMy sympathies are with Ms. Sundby, but her thinking on this subject isn't very clear.
ReplyDeleteWithout the passage of the ACA, she still would have lost her insurance because of a dollars and cents decision by United, but she would have been absolutely uninsurable anywhere in the country (except Massachusetts) because of her pre-existing condition.
Yes, she's a "victim." But she's a victim of the bad old ways of the insurance companies, and significantly less so than she would have been before the ACA.
Attention anon 8am:
ReplyDeleteMy practice was terminated by the cuts by your KING OBAMA administration. That's right. This administration is responsible for turning over my practice to the hospital. That was the point of the cuts. Read Kathleen Sebelius' piece in the WSJ several years back blaming doctors for health care costs. Her mission was to cut physician reimbursement and she succeeded. My practice was not viable with the current imaging cuts that pay the hospital three times as much for the same study in my office. I guess the hospital lobby gave KING OBAMA more money than the physicians.
I still long for Michelle Obama's old job that Valerie Jarrett got for her with no call, no weekends, no nights, no malpractice worries that had a great $350,000/yr salary.
Somehow KING OBAMA comes up with $22B for a new government program in CMS or even the $500M for a website that doesn't work. I'm just a doctor who cuts off legs for a living or chops out kids tonsils.
You people can only apologize for him so much. This president and his stooges are toxic. Obamacare is a debacle.
Finally, wait until you find out that your "insurance" has a $6000/deductible. AFFORDABLE, LOL!
Obamacare: The Continuous Rise and Fall Of The Machines With Complex Insurance Math Models Resulting In Spasmodic, Executing “Killer Algorithms”–And Gov Can’t Model…this what I say as the formulas create winners and they create those who lose and you can't do that with healthcare and deny access but that's what's happening.
ReplyDeleteInsurers use math models and risk assessments and right now if the policies don't meet the requirements of the law they know they have a captive audience. Those who had the bare bones policies I think are getting hit hard with a comparable policy with rates no doubt.
With data too I can't help but think that uninsured may get a break too as there's not as much data floating around out there to do a detailed risk assessment on them, so six of one and half a dozen of other.
I agree too on the facility fee and moving things to a hospital that were done less expensively in the doctor's office, like an EKG for one and there's tons more examples out there too.
Just like the markets it's the continuous rise and fall of the machines but we are not stocks or bonds and yet we as humans are being kicked around like the algorithms on the markets. Insurers have a role in this too in how they approach cancelling a policy and what they offer as a replacement. Notice how few of the big insurers are participating in the markets, not in a very big way.
http://ducknetweb.blogspot.com/2013/11/obamacare-continuous-rise-and-fall-of.html
Time for some digital laws to connect the IT infrastructures at the time of lawmaking so some of this can be seen ahead of time and not they did this law with passing the verbiage and having Nancy DeParle match up the technologies to run the infrastructure, doesn't work any more. Digital laws would spell a lot of this out ahead of time and then we don't end up with technology working around verbiage and we would all know up front what the program is to the detail.