If you like your doc....tough s#!t!
Posted on 11/20/2013 7:40:05 PM PST by Second Amendment First
As Americans have begun shopping for health plans on the insurance exchanges, they are discovering that insurers are restricting their choice of doctors and hospitals in order to keep costs low, and that many of the plans exclude top-rated hospitals.
The Obama administration made it a priority to keep down the cost of insurance on the exchanges, the online marketplaces that are central to the Affordable Care Act. But one way that insurers have been able to offer lower rates is by creating networks that are far smaller than what most Americans are accustomed to.
The decisions have provoked a backlash. In one closely watched case, Seattle Children’s Hospital has filed suit against Washington’s insurance commissioner after a number of insurers kept it out of their provider networks. “It is unprecedented in our market to have major insurance plans exclude Seattle Children’s,” said Sandy Melzer, senior vice president.
The result, some argue, is a two-tier system of health care: Many of the people who buy health plans on the exchanges have fewer hospitals and doctors to choose from than those with coverage through their employers.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I noticed most ObamaCarees are getting the bronze in Barry’s Healthcare Shopping Olympics. Not much gold and silver being handed out.
MSM leftwing lickspittles.
Patients should check with their local high schools and colleges to see if they offer free or low cost courses in third world foreign languages, including: Pakistani, Spanish, Indian, French, etc. so they can best communicate with their assigned health care professional.
This is how government manages scarcity: limiting access.
The market does it by pricing and, as every thoughtful American knows, high prices cure themselves.
Free market health care here we come. The only obstacle is insurance companies and their elected cronies.
And they will be the first to stick the providers with the $6,000 per head deductible when they go to the hospital.
Just wait another year, and sign up for O’Care again
And you didn’t think Obamacare could get worse. Excbange plans are bascially
nothing more than Medicaid, only a WHOLE lot more expensive! The reason is that
obamacare says that exchange plans must cover care at “essential community providers ... that serve predominantly low-income, medically underserved individuals.” (Sec. 1311c(1)C)”. That means clinics, public hospitals and hospitals largely serving the Medicaid community.
Many exchange plans exclude the top-drawer academic hospitals like Cedars Sinai in Los Angeles, the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and New York Presbyterian in New York City. This is EXTREMELY bad news for consumers who had access to esteemed hospitals and doctors under their old plans and then got pushed into the exchanges.
This id “dog bites man” none news. Been going on for decades.
“This is how government manages scarcity: limiting access.”
See historical references to planned famines:
The English starving out the Irish.
The Russians starving out the Ukrainians, etc. etc. etc.
I think the “bronze” medal gets you those 300 to 400 pound nurses wearing XXXL SEIU T-Shirts.
“Many of the people who buy health plans on the exchanges have fewer hospitals and doctors to choose from than those with coverage through their employers.”
That will be remedied soon. Negatively of course.
I figure the biggest step toward that will be when employers start to toss their plans.
Then there will be about 85 million people who can participate in a consumer-driven market rather than employer-driven and costs will dive.
If the law stands it won’t just be doctors being cut... benefits will be cut and deductibles will go even higher. Obamacare is revenge. Just like shutting down the World War II memorial. It cost more to close it than to leave it open... but it was closed because elite liberal hate the middle class. Obamacare came out of the same pool of hate.
“Many of the people who buy health plans on the exchanges have fewer hospitals and doctors to choose from than those with coverage through their employers.”
Many?
Sounds like propaganda from the D.C.-Fairfax Landfill.
And why aren’t Republicans calling this the Democrat War on Women for payback?
Taking away their doctor..
Central planning always leads to shortages, but we just have to find out the hard way.
We need a Congress and President that use the Commerce Clause to break the internal trade barriers in America. The states have destroyed the greatest free trade union in the world with all their regulating. Let me buy insurance and medical care in whatever state I wish and from whomever I wish. All that medical/healthcare licensing is just restraint of trade.
Exactly how is that keeping costs down?
They’re contracting with providers who either: 1. Have a history of minimizing the amount spent treating each patient, or 2. are willing to accept a smaller payment than the physicians who treat employer insured patients.
They’re not actually saving money for their policy holders because the dough they save by cutting back services gets spent on all these marvelous new “benefits”. The “free preventive care”, for example, cranks up the monthly premium about 25 bucks.
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