Posted on 02/11/2015 9:09:50 AM PST by Brad from Tennessee
The health insurance market is changing. And the changes are not good. Even before there was Obamacare, most insurers most of the time had perverse incentives to attract the healthy and avoid the sick. But now that the Affordable Care Act has completely changed the nature of the market, the perverse incentives are worse than ever.
Writing in Sunday’s New York Times Elizabeth Rosenthal gives these examples:
*When Karen Pineman of Manhattan sought treatment for a broken ankle, her insurer told her that the nearest in-network doctor was in Stamford, Connecticut – in another state.
*Alison Chavez, a California breast cancer patient, was almost on the operating table when her surgery had to be cancelled because several of her doctors were leaving the insurer’s network.
*When the son of Alexis Gersten, a dentist in East Quogue New York, needed an ear, nose and throat specialist, the insurer told her the nearest one was in Albany – five hours away.
*When Andrea Greenberg, a New York lawyer, called an insurance company hotline with questions she found herself speaking to someone reading off a script in the Philippines. . .
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/sunday-review/insured-but-not-covered.html?_r=0
Meh. It’s ridiculously simple for me.
I have no insurance. When I need medical attention I go to the doctor and put it on Amex, write a check or pay cash. It’s absurd how cheap it is when they don’t have to deal with insurance companies.
Sponsoring FReepers are contributing
$10 Each time a New Monthly Donor signs up!
Get more bang for your FR buck!
Click Here To Sign Up Now!
Same experience here. I needed x-rays a while ago and the bill was $240.00. But the accounts clerk said if I paid cash it would be $163.00 because it sames them tons of paperwork, they usually wait 6 months or more for the money and often it’s not as much as they bill for.
I think the wonks that said Obamacare would work used Common Core math to figure it out.
I had no insurance in 2006, and needed a hernia operation. The price quoted was 6,000. I offered to pay cash, and do it when the doctor’s biz was slow.
Cost?
1,800.
Primary point of Obamacare:
UNinsure the insured.
Punish those who were “lucky” enough to have insurance.
Insurance should be for catastrophic/hospitalization events only.
How I miss my reasonable, affordable hospital plan with a 3000 dollar deductible.
That’s wild.
Same here for “scoping for dollars”. 3 grand at the hospital, $750.00 cash at a gastro doctor with an ambulatory suite right across the street from the hospital.
The only thing the government should cover is catastrophic health care costs and leave routine health care up to the patients involved.
There is no need for the government to dictate every facet of health insurance. It doesn’t work and makes it more expensive than it needs to be.
We can start by stripping out routine health care expenses out of Obamacare.
Obama applied the same attitude to the financial collapse: “Anyone who can afford to own stock deserves to lose money.”
Just a guess here, but I would bet that every single one of the people used as examples of Obamacare failure voted for Obama - twice - and wholeheartedly supported Obamacare while it was being rammed through.
Just like Liberals. They LOVE their bumper stickers, but they hate getting kicked in the groin with the policies their bumper stickers proselytize.
You watch, next these very same people will blame rotten Republicans for “doing nothing”. Liberals cannot be introspective as that would shatter their delicately constructed self-righteous façade.
Insurance should be for catastrophic/hospitalization events only.
How I miss my reasonable, affordable hospital plan with a 3000 dollar deductible.
If I actually bought health insurance, it would DRASTICALLY alter my life style negatively. I’d have to sell half my property and one of my vehicles, and that would be just for starters. It would pretty much destroy my wife’s and my life as we know it.
I see this in the real estate loan business as well.
They’ve made it so people with excellent credit cannot get mortgages on investment real estate in order to build wealth,
while at the same time they are requiring banks to loan to people with really bad credit.
I experienced this abou 20 years ago. The Chiropractor wanted $250 for x-rays. When I said I had no insurance (it didn’t cover chiropractic), they charged me just $60 for the film.
When I had $5000 deductible, my daughter’s broken arm cost a grand total of $275 back about 22 years ago. I just visited her last year in Seattle and she said she tells her friends that story when they talk about Obamacare. And she is a LIBERAL. (but she’s not THAT stupid)
That was the PLAN.
Someone made the comparison that if car insurance was like obamacare, not only would you have to have it, but it would cover oil changes.
That happened to a friend of mine too. Similar dollar amounts.
I had a double hernia operation for which the hospital billed the Insurance Company $54,000. The Insurance Company paid $18,000, and I paid $2,000. You got a good deal there.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.