Posted on 10/25/2013 9:19:07 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Sue Klinkhamer has a problem.
It’s called Obamacare.
And the irony of her situation is not lost on her. In a recent email addressed to her former boss, Illinois Congressman Bill Foster, and other Democratic colleagues, she wrote:
“I spent two years defending Obamacare. I had constituents scream at me, spit at me and call me names that I can’t put in print. The congressman was not re-elected in 2010 mainly because of the anti-Obamacare anger. When the congressman was not re-elected, I also (along with the rest of our staff) lost my job. I was upset that because of the healthcare issue, I didn’t have a job anymore but still defended Obamacare because it would make healthcare available to everyone at, what I assumed, would be an affordable price. I have now learned that I was wrong. Very wrong.”
For Klinkhamer, 60, President Obama’s oft-repeated words ring in her ears: “If you like your health plan, you will keep it.”
Well, possibly not.
When Klinkhamer lost her congressional job, she had to buy an individual policy on the open market.
Three years ago, it was $225 a month with a $2,500 deductible. Each year it went up a little to, as of Sept. 1, $291 with a $3,500 deductible. Then, a few weeks ago, she got a letter.
“Blue Cross,” she said, “stated my current coverage would expire on Dec. 31, and here are my options: I can have a plan with similar benefits for $647.12 [or] I can have a plan with similar [but higher] pricing for $322.32 but with a $6,500 deductible.”
She went on, “Blue Cross also tells me that if I don’t pick one of the options, they will just assume I want the one for $647. ... Someone please tell me why my premium in January will be $356 more than in December?”
The sticker shock Klinkhamer is experiencing is something millions of individual policyholders are reeling from having gotten similar letters from their private insurers.
As UCLA Public Policy expert Dr. Gerald F. Kominski told CBS News this week, “Half of the 14 million people who buy insurance on their own are not going to keep the policies they previously had.”
Part of the reason those policies will be more expensive, he explained, is that Obamacare is requiring insurers to offer “a better product with better protection.”
Congressman Foster, Klinkhamer’s former boss who has since been returned to Congress, told me by phone Friday, “A very large number of people are very grateful” for Obamacare.
No doubt about that.
But right now Sue Klinkhamer, no novice to government or public policy, isn’t among them.
“I am a Democrat and I believe in healthcare for all,” she said.
“And I was excited that previously uninsured people could now get insurance on the open market. But this is not affordable to me.”
Klinkhamer suggests renaming the Affordable Care Act.
“Just call it,” she said dryly, “the Available Care Act.”
I love that it happened to a Dem—
“I spent two years defending Obamacare. I had constituents scream at me, spit at me and call me names that I can’t put in print.”
Sure we can, do it every day here you dumb ass.
Eat it Dems. You built that. Yes you did. You got sucker punched by your own idol.
Utopia meets reality
Good I hope her premiums rise proportionately to the damge she has done to this nation.
All dem and RINO congress staff members need a copy of this as a reminder.
This is just redistribution at it’s best.
“From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”
Maybe she will now understand this better.
>”I am a Democrat and I believe in healthcare for all”<
I am a Conservative Republican and I believe in everything for everybody, if they work for it of course.
When you are down and discouraged, just remember that 50% of the people that get those notices from their insurers are democrats who voted for obumbler.
Although this woman, who is so dumb that she still defends obumbler care even after her rates are going way up, there are enough dims that will see the light and join conservatives to get obumbler care repealed.
We should not give up, but rather find those dims and enlist them.
Health care was available before the act passed too. And cheaper. And more choices.
Bull plop! Even the math deprived will be able to see that a policy that costs twice as much AND raises the deductible is not "better protection".
Me too. She wanted it not she got it. Wait till she gets a load of the death panels she is really gonna be pissed.
...How so....?
Since the Government changed the rules on the insurance companies in the first place.
Insurance companies are just using Adam Smith's invisible hand to move resources around so they stay in business.....and some policies are cancelled because of it.
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