Keep your doctor, fire your senator, Pt. 374

Bookworm Room lives in Marin County, California, and pays special attention to how blue politics work out there.  Her post today alerts us to new fun that awaits not only those unlucky enough to have been dumped into the Obamacare exchanges, but also anyone who bought insurance directly from a company that also sells on the exchanges, which by law must mirror what they offer on the exchanges.  Customers of California's Blue Cross Anthem already knew they were in for a tough time finding doctors who were part of their new network, or even determining with any certainty which doctors really were part of the network, given the consistently misleading information they have received to date.  Now customers find that, if they get surgery done at some hospitals, their insurance may cover the bills from their surgeons and from the hospital, but not the bill from their anesthesiologist, pathologist, or radiologist.  (That is, they will find this out if they are alert enough to call first and demand specific information about every conceivable bill that may be coming their way as they schedule surgery.)  And yet at Marin General, for instance, the patient has no choice about which of these professionals to use; the hospital farms out the ancillary work as it pleases.

Yes, this law is really going to bend that cost curve down.

We're still trying to decide what to do later this year if our insurance policy really will not be renewed.  (It's impossible to guess ahead of time how far HHS and the White House will go to avoid panic just before the midterm elections.)  If we really must replace our coverage, I am inclined to go with a company (such as Health Assurance) that has elected to stay out of the exchanges altogether.  So far, the indications are that Health Assurance is maintaining a provider network that can be attempted to be believed.

Recently an old friend looked me up on Facebook, then began to argue with me about how inexcusable it was to support the repeal of Obamacare.  Didn't I care about the uninsured, she demanded?  You can imagine my response.

15 comments:

Ymar Sakar said...

Eric Holder: Justice is not blind. For I am her eyes.

Elise said...

Perhaps ObamaCare will bend the cost curve down by making people so scared about the possibility some medical bills won't be covered that they just stop having surgery.

DL Sly said...

Actually, I'd like to hear what your response was, as I know it was excellently worded and I'd hate to put inferior words in your mouth....even if they only reside in my mind.
0>;~}

Elise said...

Actually, I'd like to hear what your response was

I would, too, but I assume it was unprintable, at least on this blog. :+)

ZZMike said...

"Customers of California's Blue Cross Anthem ..."
That's the whole point. Obamacare is insurance. As far as I can tell, not a nickel of all that money is being spent on doctors, on hospitals, nurses, &c. It's just insurance.

But if there's nobody to recognize or accept it, I doesn't do much good.

One wonders, then, just where all that money some people are paying, is going.

E Hines said...

That's the whole point. Obamacare is insurance.

Well, no it isn't. It's Federally mandated, privately funded welfare. Insurance is a (partial or whole) risk transfer for an agreed fee. There's no risk being transferred under Obamacare, only a mandate to provide some payments in return for a mandated income stream, which stream must be within a government approved band, regardless of the risk being "covered."

Withal, the point is valid: nor insurance nor Obamacare have ought to do with health services, they have only to do with payment, should services be needed or wanted and a doctor found to provide them.

Eric Hines

Texan99 said...

I keep my responses on Facebook civil, I hope! I basically said she should get back to me when someone proposes a policy that will "insure the uninsured" without uninsuring the insured in equal or greater numbers. I also suggested that no one had yet explained to me why it was good policy to destroy my insurance and, indeed, I doubted whether the explanation could be attempted without the policymakers' admitting that the promise that I would keep my policy was an intentional lie from the outset. To her credit, she quit blustering and simply said she didn't understand it either.

E Hines said...

...the promise that I would keep my policy was an intentional lie from the outset.

Which it was.

Eric Hines

Elise said...

Very civil, Texan99. Thanks for sharing that.

Texan99 said...

"Which it was"--oh, of course, but my interlocutor would essentially be admitting it, which would be rare.

As for whether my response was really civil, well, I'm always on thin ice accusing my opponents (or at least the politicians they continue to support) of lying. But at least I didn't give way to my usual impulse to refer to a stinking, bald-faced, cowardly, dishonorable, filthy lie that oozed out of third-rate hacks for the basest of motives, i.e., to give them a foothold to meddle in affairs of other people which they lacked the intellectual horsepower, training, or experience to improve, or even to avoid screwing up by the numbers.

I have calmed down very slightly since last November.

E Hines said...

I'm always on thin ice accusing my opponents (or at least the politicians they continue to support) of lying.

Not so much. The truth is never on thin ice. It just has actually to be true.

Eric Hines

Elise said...

But at least I didn't give way to my usual impulse to refer to a ...

Then I'd say that qualifies as civil. If your old friend does not buy herself purchase health insurance in the individual market then I'd say it qualifies as saintly.

There's no question Obama and other supporters of ObamaCare lied. The interesting question is what culpability attaches to supporters (like some of my friends) who believed what they were told by those politicians. As far as the people I know, I don't believe they accepted the lie knowing it was one but I do believe they didn't want to know.

Texan99 said...

This old friend represents one of the best arguments I know for finding a better solution than we've got for people in desperate medical straits. She suffered a head injury in a hit-and-run car-vs.-pedestrian accident many years ago, after which she never really was able to work much. I'd love to think that we'd found a way to make sure that people like her could stay insured or other maintain access to basic medical care (not to mention food and shelter), but I can't even begin to believe that Obamacare has improved things overall.

The answer for people in her situation seems to be Medicaid, but the problem with Medicaid is not addressed by any of the nonsense contained in the ACA. The problem with Medicaid is people lying to themselves about what medical care costs and hoping that someone else will always have to pay for it. Doctor bills too high? Just cut their reimbursements! Patients can't find a doctor? Complain about evil doctors who expect to be paid for working! Need more people to subsidize the Medicaid reimbursements so doctors will work without guns to their heads? Lie to everyone and claim that someone else will be the one to pay higher taxes, or to subsidize low premiums with their own higher ones.

E Hines said...

The interesting question is what culpability attaches to supporters...who believed what they were told by those politicians.

Why, none at all. Obama took care of that with his...apology. In which he apologized, not for his lie, but that folks believed his lie.

Eric Hines

Elise said...

As someone who was herself in dire medical straits for quite a while, I would certainly like to find a way to provide for people in them. And I absolutely agree that Medicaid is not the answer - somewhere I read it described as the ghetto of health insurance. I don't know what the answer is but I'm pretty certain that any approach other than ObamaCare would have been better.