Hey
everybody, long time no writing. I've been a little busy, a little uninspired,
and a little lazy. One of the things I've been doing over the past few months
is getting signed up for health insurance under the provisions of the Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act or as it’s more commonly known “ObamaCare”.
Not only did I sign up once but I got to do it twice.
As I've written before, Diane and I already
had health insurance through Anthem Blue Cross. It was a high deductible plan
that cost us around $600 per month. In October we got a letter from Anthem
stating that because of the required provisions of the upcoming PPACA our
current policy would no longer be available after the first of the year. The
letter suggested we shop for a policy on the new Covered California Insurance
Exchange or if we wanted they could put us in a comparable policy for $1100 a
month (an increase of only 83%).
As suggested, I went on the Covered
CA website and started looking at policies. I entered all my information
including financial and was surprised to find out we qualified for a premium
subsidy. A new policy, comparable to my $600 one was now only going to cost me
$2 a month. Cool for us I thought, but what was bugging me was the federal
subsidy part. Why was the government going to pay $912 for a policy that was
the same as my $600 one? That’s an increase of over 50% and that’s our tax
money paying for it.
I went ahead and signed up for a new
policy through Covered CA with Anthem Blue Cross. It took a couple of months
and a few phone calls to actually confirm that we were enrolled before the
January first deadline but we were, so nothing to worry about, or so we
thought.
In January Diane had a couple of
routine appointments with her doctors at UC Davis Medical. She gave them our
new insurance information and went on her merry way. Then in February, a day
before a scheduled follow up appointment she got a call from UCD saying that
they wouldn't accept our new insurance because they didn't have a contract with
Anthem for that policy. WTF! I thought Obamacare was going to give us better
coverage! We had done what we were supposed to do, buying through the exchange
and now we didn't have coverage where we needed it. Kind of ticked me off, so I
spent the next 6 hours on the phone (most of it on hold) with Anthem and
Covered CA getting it figured out. Ultimately we ended up switching to a different
policy and company, one that UCD would accept. Now it’s going to cost me $24 a
month but that’s still better than the $600 I had been paying. I guess for me
personally it’s working out, but what about Obamacare in general, what do I really
think about it.
If you've read my columns in the
past you probably know that I’m a politically unaffiliated, left leaning, so
called social progressive. You would think that I would be a strong supporter
of Obamacare. Well you would be wrong. I am a strong proponent of health care
reform and government subsidized health care but as I see it, Obamacare is
neither of those things. It is a subsidy to the insurance companies not to the
health care providers. It is a monetary windfall for the insurers in exchange
for what? Not being able to deny coverage anymore but still able to raise our
rates. If I was unfortunate enough to earn more money and didn't qualify for
the premium subsidy I would be paying hundreds of dollars more each month and
not really getting any better benefits or health care.
Now that I've climbed on the soap
box I might as well lay it out there. What I think we need in this country is
real heath care reform. What I mean is government control of pricing (not free
market), if the insurance companies can dictate what is a “usual and customary
allowed expense” then why can’t our government? At the very least we should
have a single payer system, get rid of the insurance companies.
To view the column in it's original form go to page 15 of the following link. Winters Express 3/13/14
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