UPDATE: A new wrinkle appeared today. Obama now says anyone who was canceled can buy a “catastrophic plan” and keep it for a year. Of course, the “catastrophic plans offered are larded with Obamacare mandates. It is looking like surrender is getting near. The lefties look like fools but what did we expect when this thing began?
All of this, along with previous time extensions for sign-ups, suggests Obamacare is heading for a spectacularly awful January. The president is so obsessed with ameliorating the political problem that he is dismantling his own plan, bit by bit, both undermining its economic viability and aggravating voters and political allies. Is this the handiwork of the triage maven John Podesta? If so, they’ll need a clean-up man to clean up from Podesta.
The comments after this post should be hilarious. Let’s look…
Obamacare is a done deal. Obama has three more years to patiently work this through. Even if GOP takes the senate in 2014 they will not have a veto proof majority. GOP has absolutely no alternatives (except selling across state lines, which is another way of saying huh..).
Heritage foundation worked this out carefully in pre-Obama days; Romney was not stupid when he did this in Mass.; they knew that individual mandate is the only way to cover preexisting conditions (you may want to think this through if you are a bit slow….or ask anyone who works in insurance)
There is the old lefty lie about Heritage and the mandate plan from 20 years ago. This one is even funnier…
Not sure why there’s so much concern from Jen on whether Dems will stick with the President in 2014. ACA website glitches will be a thing of the past; people will find out that taxpayers are quite generous with subsidies.
The nature of Obamacare is becoming more and more clear as the months go by. A hearing before Darryl Issa’s committee brought out a few facts which have been thin on the ground lately.
Dr. Patricia McLaughlin, an ophthalmologist based in New York City, said insurers are introducing limited networks and announcing new plans that will offer only in-network benefits, excluding all out-of-network doctors.
She noted the problem of limited networks is that many health plans have substantially reduced or eliminated previous coverage options that allowed patients to see the doctor of their choice.
This is necessary as the insurers try to limit their losses as the risk pools evaporate. I haven’t yet learned if out-of-network doctors can charge cash prices. As employer sponsored plans dry up, there will be fewer contracts to be violated by offering services at lower prices. At present, a doctor who offers a cash price substantially below the contract price risks cancellation of the contract. Medicare is even more ferocious in protecting its “discounts” by threatening prosecution of a Medicare provider who offers more or cheaper services than those “allowed” by Medicare, even though payment is a fraction of the “allowed” charges.
Dr. Jeffrey English, a neurologist at the Multiple Sclerosis Center of Atlanta, said the law punishes doctors like him because he recommends too many costly procedures, such as MRIs and brain-image scans, compared to his peers.
“In reward for my passions to prevent real people from becoming disabled, CMS and insurance companies like United Healthcare are going to post negative grades in my name,” he said. “They will financially penalize me or the institution I work for, as I am trying to practice quality care to some of our most vulnerable patients.”
(more…)
