Even if you liked your plan, Obamacare will pick a plan for you

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November 22, 2014 10:09 pm Robert Zimmerman

Finding out what’s in it: In order to prevent Obamacare enrolless from experiencing the rate hikes expected when they automatically renew their 2014 plans for 2015, the Obama administration is proposing that it instead choose cheaper plans for those that automatically renew, even if that new plan will change the available doctors and hospitals in their network.

So, you decide that the plan you had in 2014 was worth keeping in 2015 and thus allow that plan to automatically renew rather than spend another week trying to struggle through the badly designed and hack-prone Obamacare website. When you visit your doctor however you then discover that you actually didn’t renew that plan, the Obama administration picked a different plan for you, and your doctor is no longer a participant in your plan. You have to change doctors!

Isn’t wonderful how much the Obama administration cares?

2 comments

Kevin R.
November 23, 2014 at 10:17 am
Depriving people of control over their own lives is exactly the opposite purpose of legitimate government.
Edward
November 23, 2014 at 4:50 pm
So, when they go to their 2014 Doctor (whom Obama never promised that you could keep), how much does that visit *cost* them so that they can find out that he is no longer on their plan — oops — that he is not on their new plan?

Confusion is everywhere, with this Obama plan. It is apparently all in the name of “help.”

So what happens to the patient who is in the middle of some sort of treatment, and now has to be re-diagnosed by a new doctor and re-approved by a new insurance company? And what if the treatment is not covered under the new, cheaper policy, and the victim — er — patient has to pay out of pocket for treatment?

Aren’t these problems the exact reason why We the People want to be able to have the freedom to choose our own policies — or even whether we want to contract and associate ourselves with an insurer in the first place?

This “wonderful” benefit that the Democrats have bestowed upon us keeps getting worse and worse, each descent into worstness being a surprise (why are we surprised that this happens?).

(Please note, all of these questions are rhetorical. Of course I think that the patient gets screwed and that we have lost valuable freedoms, and that we may be terribly foolish for continually being surprised that the government has found newer and more creative ways to screw us — it is not “all in the name of help,” because screwing us seems to be their favorite pastime, and they obviously have a lot of time on their hands to pass.)

On the other hand, even the insurance companies can mess up doctor choices. I once went to a doctor that was on my then-insurer’s list, but when I tried to collect the reimbursement, I was told that he was not an approved doctor (this was in the days when this newfangled inter-webby thing was new, and everything was on months-old paper). It ended happily, though, because the guy on the phone could approve the payment, but only if he read to me the rules (read: riot act) over the phone. (Needless to say, I chose another insurer at the next open enrollment, but only because I foolishly thought it would solve the problem.)

Even if you liked your plan, Obamacare will pick a plan for you

2 comments

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