Medical worker finally gets insurance on Obamacare website (or the free pony was worth the wait)

MSNBC ^ | 12/10/2013 | MSNBC

[chuckee]

It took two months, weekly visits to the jammed-up federal website and a half-dozen phone calls, but JoAnn Smith finally got health insurance Monday. It’ll only cost her $3.19 a month to cover herself and her husband.

“I just instantly burst into tears,” she says.

Smith started working on getting insurance even before the federal website, HealthCare.gov, opened Oct. 1, pre-registering to get a headstart on the process. But, like millions of other Americans who tried, she was stymied by the website’s glitches.

She told NBC News her story last week, and as of Friday, a week after the federal website was supposed to have been much improved, Smith still could not get all the way through the process.

Smith, a 60-year-old medical transcriptionist in Clearwater, Fla., must use the federal website to buy health insurance because Florida opted not to run its own. She’s been without health insurance for years and had been looking forward to getting subsidized coverage for herself and her husband Eric, 56, who’s unemployed.

The 2010 Affordable Care Act aims to get health insurance to the 16 percent of Americans who don’t have any by helping some buy health insurance on new websites, and by widening Medicaid benefits to others. People have until Dec. 23 to sign up for health insurance that starts on the first possible day, Jan. 1. They have until March 31 to sign up and avoid paying a tax......

[jocon307]

Yes, the points you make are very valid. This woman is EXACTLY the type of person who will be determined to obtain insurance. And I certainly don’t blame her for that. But she and her husband will be a net negative on the system as designed.

[lepton]

If a plan for a family of four earning 94k needs a $5500 subsidy, there’s something wrong with the plan and when the subsidy drops to zero at the next thousand of earning, there’s something wrong with the subsidies.

[beethovenfan]

But her personal information has been hacked.

[MasterGunner01]

This article smacks of Bravo Sierra to me. Since it is sourced from MSNBC, it IS Bravo Sierra.

[Wooly]

The deductible is more like $6000 each ($1200 for both of them).
However the Obama media is leaving out one important item, while they have enrolled on the website, THEY DO NOT HAVE MEDICAL INSURANCE! The payment system is not built yet, the subsidy amounts are not set yet, and the price of the insurance has not been determined.
It has been reported , but not widely, that the prices quoted on the ObamaRealyDoesCare website are low balled and the subsidy amounts are overstated. Remember it was just last month that we had the woman who's story Obama used on television about having affordable care after years without, that when she got the real price was unable to afford the insurance.

[kcvl]

Smith’s employer doesn’t provide health insurance. “They took a vote at the company and people wanted more money in their pockets,” she says. And business has been thin. “I have had four paycuts in one year,” says Smith, who estimates she will earn $23,000 this year for her 40-hour a week job.

And how much unemployment does your husband get?

been looking forward to getting subsidized coverage for herself and her husband Eric, 56, who’s unemployed