Posted on 10/11/2017 4:48:23 AM PDT by Kaslin
Cue the funeral bagpipes. My fourth health insurance plan is dead.
Two weeks ago, my husband and I received yet another cancellation notice for our private, individual health insurance coverage. It's our fourth Obamacare-induced obituary in four years. Our first death notice, from Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, arrived in the fall of 2013. The insurer informed us that because of "changes from health care reform (also called the Affordable Care Act or ACA)," our plan no longer met the federal government's requirements.
Never mind our needs and desires as consumers who were quite satisfied with a high-deductible PPO that included a wide network of doctors for ourselves and our two children.
Our second death knell, from Rocky Mountain Health Plans, tolled in August 2015. That notice signaled the end of a plan we didn't want in the first place that didn't cover our kids' dental care and wasn't accepted at our local urgent care clinic. The insurer pulled out of the individual market in all but one county in Colorado, following the complete withdrawal from that sector by Humana and UnitedHealthcare.
Our third "notice of plan discontinuation," again from Anthem, informed us that the insurer would "no longer offer your current health plan in the State of Colorado" in August 2016. With fewer and fewer choices as know-it-all Obamacare bureaucrats decimated the individual market here and across the country, we enrolled in a high-deductible Bronze HSA EPO (Health Savings Account Exclusive Provider Organization) offered by Minneapolis-based startup, Bright Health.
Now, here we are barely a year later: Deja screwed times four. Our current plan will be discontinued on Jan. 1, 2018.
"But don't worry," Bright Health's eulogy writer chirped, "we have similar plans to address your needs."
Riiiiight. Where have I heard those pie-in-the-sky promises before? Oh, yeah. Straight out of the socialized medicine Trojan horse's mouth. "If you like your doctor," President Obama promised, "you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what."
Is pathological lying covered under the Affordable Care Act?
Speaking of Affordable Care Act whoppers, so much for "affordable." Our current deductible is $6,550 per person; $13,100 for our family of four. Assuming we can find a new plan at the bottom of the individual market barrel, our current monthly premium, $944.86, will rise to more than $1,300 a month.
"What's taking place is a market correction; the free market is at work," says Colorado's state insurance commissioner, Marguerite Salazar. "(T)his could be an indication that there were too many options for the market to support."
This presumptuous central planner called federal intervention to eliminate "too many" options for consumers the free market at work. Yes, friends, the Rocky Mountain High is real.
This isn't a "market correction." It's a government catastrophe. Premiums for individual health plans in Virginia are set to skyrocket nearly 60 percent in 2018. In New Hampshire, those rates will rise 52 percent. In South Carolina, individual market consumers will face an average 31.3 percent hike. In Tennessee, they'll see rates jump between 20-40 percent.
Private, flexible PPOs for self-sufficient, self-employed people are vanishing by design. The social-engineered future -- healthy, full-paying consumers being herded into government-run Obamacare exchanges and severely regulated regional HMOs -- is a bipartisan big government health bureaucracy's dream come true.
These choice-wreckers had the arrogant audacity to denigrate our pre-Obamacare plans as "substandard" (Obama), "crappy" (MSNBC big mouth Ed Schultz) and "junk policies" (Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa). When I first called attention to the cancellation notice tsunami in 2013, liberal Mother Jones magazine sneered that the phenomenon was "phony." And they're still denying the Obamacare death spiral. Liberal Vox Media recently called the crisis "a lie."
I don't have enough four-letter words for these propagandists. There are an estimated 450,000 consumers like us in Colorado and 17 million of us nationwide -- small-business owners, independent contractors and others who don't get their plans through group coverage, big companies or government employers. The costs, headaches and disruption in our lives caused by Obamacare's meddling meddlers are real and massive.
But we're puzzles to corporate media journalists who've never had to meet a payroll and don't even know what is the individual market.
We're invisible to late-night TV clowns who get their Obamacare-at-all-costs talking points from Chuck Schumer.
We're pariahs to social justice health care activists and Democrats who want us to just shut up and subsidize everyone else's insurance.
And we're expendables to establishment Republicans who hoovered up campaign donations on the empty promise to repeal Obamacare -- and now consider amnesty for immigrants here illegally and gun control higher legislative priorities than keeping their damned word.
We're the canaries in the Obamacare coal mine. Ignore us at your peril, America. You're next.
I hope this health sharing plan I am in is going to be good enough.
I’m headed into 2018 with maybe one ACA plan in my area to “choose” from, with an unknown percent of rate hikes, of course.
It’s either that or health sharing, which I haven’t tried yet.
What a system!
The GOP in 2018 is going to get one hell of a wake up call...
Pres. Trump lied to Americans that he would
ORDER the Congress to live under ObamaCARE, too.
Has that happened????
The GOPe needs to be destroyed over their endless Obamacare repeal lies. They should be hunted through the streets, boiled in oil and made to need Obamacare, figuratively, of course.
The wun lied and water is wet.
Yes, Ocare working as intended, but there are real lower cost, lower deductable options. These are the faith based cost sharing groups, where in your case the monthly sharing amount is less than half
that 1300 number and the total family yearly deductable under 4000. Been sharing medical cost for 18 years, thru multiple major surgeries, never had an issue. Saved 1000’s of dollars.
Remarkable hatred of the middle class. Not content to destroy their jobs and small businesses, this the destruction of their lives.
The indigent, poor, infirm, mentally ill, and incompetent are paid for by government. They pay for this on the backs of the middle class through grossly high health insurance costs but also through higher taxes.
Trying to dodge these costs, the middle class will die at a higher rate than in the past. The poor will live longer than in the past.
The percentage of the incapable will rise. That of the capable will decline.
The Marxist/Leninist hatred of the middle class. Ultimately, A return to serfs and their lords.
Well, no...it's actually codified in the ACA!
Interesting to know she’s on Obamacare. I guess she and her husband are self-employed.
I, too, lost my Ocare when my monthly premiums went up to $4,000 a month. And I have no real health issues.
My wife has been on an individual plan for years because my employer based ppo would jump by $700/month if I add her. Over the past couple of years she has gone through this same dance. Now, she only has two real options: a crappy HMO through the exchange or join my plan. It is literally crazy.
We can’t understand why the health insurance companies helped lobby for this law.
We can’t understand why the health insurance companies helped lobby for this law.
Two reasons, near as I can tell:
Billions and billions in subsidies.
Millions of people forced to purchase their products.
and..... resistance was futile. They lacked the raw political power
Didn’t our GOP liars censor South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson for speaking truth to power? “You Lie!” he said out loud to Obama when he had all he could stand.
We should have known then that the GOP had no stomach for a fight. President Trump should have him over to the White House for a lunch, photo ops, and tweet storm.
Interesting to know she’s on Obamacare. I guess she and her husband are self-employed.
I, too, lost my Ocare when my monthly premiums went up to $4,000 a month. And I have no real health issues.
Yes. If these premium increases actually happen they will reignite the demands for health insurance reform, and if it doesn’t happen the republicans in congress will be held responsible. It isn’t Obamacare anymore— it is Republican senate dereliction of duty by Paul, McCain, Heller, etc.
Just wait until the new 2018 price structures start filtering out.
Costs are going to be even more eye watering than they are now.
I’m really looking forward to Trump canceling the fraudulent Congressional ObamaCare waiver for 2018
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