Only 22 Percent of Obamacare Enrollees Rate Their Health Care Coverage as Good or Excellent

Washington Free Beacon ^ | March 4, 2017 | By Ali Meyer

[Brad from Tennessee]

Only 22 percent of Obamacare enrollees polled rate their health plan satisfaction as good, very good, or excellent in 2017, according to a survey from Black Book Market Research.

This number has significantly declined from February of last year when 77 percent of Obamacare enrollees polled said their health care coverage was good, very good, or excellent.

The group polled 34,800 individuals who were enrolled in Obamacare coverage from January 2015 through February 2017 and found that the strongest dissatisfaction with Obamacare was with 2017 plans that had premium increases, a lack of competitors to choose from, narrower networks, declining consumer support, and curtailed benefits.

"Maintaining a high level of support has been nearly impossible since this last open enrollment began as several plans accepting the bulk of 2017 regional enrollees failed to congruently ramp up member services support to process claims, respond to enrollment issues, answer provider questions, denials, authorizations, and payment postings," said Douglas Brown, managing partner at Black Book Research.

Survey respondents were asked how their coverage differed from year to year. From 2015 to 2016, under 10 percent of Obamacare enrollees said their coverage had gotten worse. However, from 2016 to 2017, that number jumped to 58 percent, with these enrollees saying their health care plan had measurably declined over the year.

"The declining number of marketplace plans are evidently losing the consumer-centric approach to keep their members engaged, particularly as compared to the commercial or employer health plans that are not participating in Obamacare," said Brown. "The advent of consumerism is emerging front and center across the health care industry and Obamacare is the present theater. . ."

[lepton]

Pre-Obamacare deductible of 150/person, 500 for family. Full pay after.

Now 8k deductible for the family, then 80/20 to 15k, with 80% increase in the premium. Other people got worse.

[dhs12345]

Wow!

That is horrible. How do you survive?

[dhs12345]

BTW, you realize don't you that the reason your premiums are massively higher is so that others can have free health insurance.

Gruber made this point in his interview with Tucker Carlson week before last. Paraphrasing — Ocare was not designed to help everyone and will hurt some people so that others will have health insurance.

[lepton]

That is one of the reasons...but it is also not the point being discussed - which is that the premiums themselves consume a large portion of an individual’s or family’s available funds, creating situations where there is either not money available at all to expend within the deductible portion of costs, or the trade off is artificially and extremely high.

[lepton]

To your last point, yes, most people are not getting what they pay for in services - as risk distribution works that way - but it has been perverted to an extreme to where risk is not really being distributed, merely consequences invoked upon the masses (in this case, mostly the middle class).

[dhs12345]

Good point.

However, there is one obvious benefit to having insurance: the patient gets the insurance negotiated price for all services. The negotiated price is substantially less in cost than the “list price” (for people wo insurance) for the same services.

That is an interesting thought, too — why is the “list price” way over inflated? Why does a procedure cost 3x if you don't have insurance vs if you do? It should cost approximately the same. I am not suggesting price controls either. Just asking an obvious question. Maybe there is a lot of padding in the “list price.”

Lastly, I wonder how many folks can no longer afford the “American dream” of owning a house because of the Ocare premiums? Healthy youngsters who might forgo health insurance so that they can afford a mortgage are now forced to buy insurance and poor all of their expendable income into an over-inflated, lousy value insurance premium.