Posted on 10/12/2016 4:30:15 AM PDT by Kaslin
Once was a shock. Twice was an outrage. Thrice is a nightmare that won't end.
Over the past three years, my family's private, individual health insurance plan -- a high-deductible Preferred Provider Organization -- has been canceled three times. Our first death notice, from Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, arrived in the fall of 2013. Our second, from Rocky Mountain Health Plans, came last August. Three weeks ago, we received another ominous "notice of plan discontinuation" from Anthem informing us that the insurer "will no longer offer your current health plan in the State of Colorado."
Every time we receive a cancellation letter, I recall President Obama's big lie: "If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what."
Then I imagine Vincent Price's evil "Thriller" laugh reverberating at the end of that cruel punchline: Mwahahahahahaha!
(Actually, you can play a real-life horror soundtrack by watching Obama's jerk speechwriters Jon Lovett, David Litt and Jon Favreau cackle with liberal PBS host Charlie Rose earlier this year about authoring Obamacare's big lie. Google it, but take your blood pressure medication first.)
Like an estimated 22 million other Americans, I am a self-employed small-business owner who buys health insurance for my family directly on the individual market (as opposed to group insurance through a company or third party). Our most recent plan features a $6,000 deductible with a $1,000 monthly premium. It's nosebleed expensive, but provides us access to specialists not curtailed by bureaucratic gatekeepers. This has been important for us because several members of my family have required specialized care for chronic illnesses.
Once again, however, I'll soon be talking about our plan in the past tense. Choices for families like mine have evaporated in the era of Obamacare. In Colorado, UnitedHealthCare and Humana will cease selling individual plans next year. Rocky Mountain Health Plans is pulling out of the individual market in all but one county. Nearly 100,000 of my fellow Coloradans will be forced to find new insurance alternatives as open enrollment approaches on Nov. 1, according to the Denver Business Journal. As Anthem abandons PPOs, the cost of remaining individual market plans will soar an average of 20 percent.
It's a nationwide implosion.
Individual market customers on the Obamacare exchange in Oklahoma learned last week that they'll face average rate hikes of a whopping 76 percent. Last month, Maryland approved double-digit rate hikes for all individual market plans. In August, Tennessee approved rate increases of between 44 and 62 percent for three insurers still carrying individual market plans. And in Minnesota, where the individual market is on the brink of collapse, state officials recently agreed to raise rates an average of 60 percent next year -- affecting an estimated 250,000 people both on and off the Obamacare exchanges.
The private individual insurance market is in peril. The government-run exchanges are flailing. And the vaunted nonprofit Obamacare co-ops that were supposed to dramatically lower costs have bombed despite billions in taxpayer subsidies.
I believe this insurance market meltdown -- which many of us predicted from the get-go -- is not by accident, but by design. Or as Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner John D. Doak put it: "This system has been doomed from the beginning."
Smug propagandists for Obamacare, such as liberal magazine Mother Jones, continue to dismiss the plight of millions of families like mine and accuse us of concocting a "phony" crisis. But it's the architects of Obamacare who prevaricated all along. Remember: Obamacare godfather and MIT professor Jonathan Gruber bragged that "lack of transparency" was a "huge political advantage," along with what he derided as "the stupidity of the American voter."
This wealth redistribution Trojan horse was sold to gullible Americans as a vehicle for expanding "affordable" access to health insurance for all. Now, millions of us are paying the price: crappier plans, fewer choices, shrinking access to specialists, skyrocketing price tags -- and no end in sight to the death spiral.
Mission accomplished.
All going according to The Plan™
Keeping a few so-called “friends” has almost cost us a free republic.
If patriots started calling out democrat traitors a few decades ago, we would never have had to deal with evil Godless presidents like Clinton and Obama.
“Failure to speak out against evil is evil itself.” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
I was discussing that with a guy I know from Canada. He agreed that single payer is good, for basic stuff. Break an arm, no problem. Need an MRI, or have heart troubles, or cancer, you are absolutely screwed.
A colleague of his ponied up $300,000 for American cancer treatment because Health Canada wouldn’t touch him.
Good thing Roberts thought it constitutional (my sarc knows no bounds)
Coverage for my wife and I with a gold not platinum plan will be $24,000 starting December 1.
Hillary is visiting your state today,go visit and ask her what her rationale is for keeping Obamacare,I’m sure she will be honest with you
I don't want to sound like an a**hole about this, but I'd rather hang around with my dog .. or, in my case, my cats .. rather than associate with an active liberal or democrat.
You can keep!
Obama already told the unions that’s the end game, even if it takes 20 years to get there. He’s caught on tape saying it.
Uh huh. Sure she will.
Well, I certainly don’t mean to be at all argumentative, but folks in truly Red states (like Texas) probably don’t know what it’s like in Blue states (like Mass). I do what I can, but I don’t get in people’s faces. Often it’s enough to demonstrate that I am not a bigoted, moronic, judgmental Nazi. I’m just a guy. I just want to be left alone. And “some” of these Liberal ideas seem “a little funny”. I keep it mild.
I really am surrounded by nutjobs. You have no idea.
To that extent, I agree. However, that's one of the reasons I left Michigan (what was to me an extremely Blue liberal unionized state) at a very early age. My father was a heavy union man who worked for Dow Chemical and who was proud of supporting liberal .. if not downright communist .. candidates. I left, joined the Navy and then the Army, and never looked back.
I wasn't born in Texas, but I got here as soon as I could and, on the few occasions that I have returned to Michigan for family funerals, class reunions, etc, I take my Texas attitude up there with me, and express it freely.
Although that may be a function of knowing that I don't have to stay there long and have a safe and comfortable bolt hole away from those crazies.
Joe Wilson knew, and told everyone the night of the SOTU speech.
“You lie!”
5.56mm
Family & relatives here in California got notices....26% increase for one member; 31% for another; and got notice my long term care insurance rate up about 103% (all in one year).
ObamaCare....great stuff....lower your premium by avg of $2,500 per year, keep your doctor, keep your plan, blah blah blah....if political perjury was a crime, the Dems in DC would all be wearing orange.
Spent some time in Cali, Colombia while having some procedures done. I have family (by marriage) there.
I saw a cardiologist (3 visits), eye doctor (exam & script reading glasses, and an oncologist (yearly leukemia blood work & exam.
The total costs for all visits minus the glasses & prescriptions was $561 US for the week.
The difference?
1. Everybody works - it’s sink or swim - no handouts.
2. You cannot just walk into a hospital emergency room. There are neighborhood clinics which treat minor things and triage patients. You must go to them first unless it’s something major like a car accident or severe/life threatening.
3. Administrative fees for citizens are about $1.50 US.
4. There are no welfare/parasite classes of people sucking up available resources either. Like I said - sink or swim.
My second just died.
The first was an employee healthcare plan for retirees that was DROPPED by the employer.
We replaced that plan with a Medicare Advantage Plan from “Today’s Options”. After one year, they just CANCELLED us.
We are signing up with Excellus Blue Cross Blue Shield, another Medicare Advantage Plan (a PPO plan).
A ZERO dollar per month plan. (You read correctly, ZERO)
There is a couple in our church who head to Florida with their travel trailer every year after Christmas. The place where they stay is also frequented with Canadian snow birds. Soon after our friends arrived last season one of the Canadians was diagnosed with a serious ailment of some sort (don’t remember what). They immediately rushed back to Canada. His operation was in June.
Apparently the system concept is to delay medical treatment to see if the patient will die and save the single payer a lot of money.
Relative just turned 65.
Eligible for Medicare, so dropping Anthem Blue Cross ObamaCare Bronze Plan (like she has $6k to spend per person per year before the really pathetic Obamacare coverage kicks in)...Anthem Blue Cross—have had them for years—but Anthem Blue Cross has a history of large, sudden premium hikes....so went regular Medicare+drug plan option instead of Anthem Blue Cross’s version of same.
Funny...everyone says monopoly is bad....unless it is Govt.
People are not only ignorant, but stupid too. Even a Liberal ought to have the brain cells to recognize the brain washing everyone here gets...and thus resist it.
Don’t forget Medicare was ROBBED to fund DUMBOCARE.
Medicare paid $9.3 million in benefits to illegals
Over 14,500 claims to nearly 500 people unlawfully in U.S.
http://www.wnd.com/2016/10/medicare-paid-9-3-million-in-benefits-to-illegals/#ZgRrdCZy5TuVPlV3.99
http://www.wnd.com/2016/10/medicare-paid-9-3-million-in-benefits-to-illegals/
Here’s The MASSIVE Gift Obama’s Medicare Program Gave 500 Illegal Aliens
http://conservativetribune.com/obamas-medicare-500-aliens/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=ConservativeTribune&utm_content=2016-10-09&utm_campaign=manualpost
Dead People Received $1.5 Million in Benefits Through Medicare Program, Medicare paid 1,047 claims for services performed after the individual’s date of death
http://freebeacon.com/issues/dead-people-received-1-5-million-benefits-medicare-program/?utm_source=Freedom+Mail&utm_campaign=11083ed185-WFB_Morning_Beacon_10_12_1610_11_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b5e6e0e9ea-11083ed185-46016061
Blue Cross eliminates Obamacare coverage in Tennessee’s biggest markets
http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/business/aroundregion/story/2016/sep/26/bluecross-slashes-statewide-coverage-obamacare-half/388673/
Shortage of pain meds
http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/4/13166594/dea-opioid-epidemic-manufacturer-2017-substance-abuse
Blast from the past I use to keep up with every story posted.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2685965/posts?page=11
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