The Lesson of Obamacare: Sabotage Works

[Mass]

This is also the lesson the MSM will not give you, as they talk to you about the incompetence of the Obama administration as reported by the [link:http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/challenges-have-dogged-obamas-health-plan-since-2010/2013/11/02/453fba42-426b-11e3-a624-41d661b0bb78_print.html|Washington Post

Here is Kevin Drum's take on the issue

Amy Goldstein and Juliet Eilperin have a big piece in the Washington Post today about the disastrous implementation and rollout of Obamacare following the euphoria of its passage in 2010. Goldstein and Eilperin document plenty of bad decisions along the way, and lots of them reflect poorly on Team Obama. Still, I have to say that my big takeaway from the article was the same as Andrew Sprung's: sabotage works.

[...]

Now, one obvious question is why the law failed to finance the federal exchanges. That was pretty clearly a mistake. Still, under normal circumstances, even an opposition party would end up cutting a deal eventually to shore up the missing funding. Not this time, though. As one White House official told the Post, "You're basically trying to build a complicated building in a war zone, because the Republicans are lobbing bombs at us."

There are plenty of other examples of this, and Sprung outlines them in his post today. No federal program that I can remember faced quite the implacable hostility during its implementation that Obamacare has faced. This excuses neither the Obama administration's poor decisions nor its timidity in the face of Republican attacks, but it certainly puts them in the proper perspective.

But the media are busy reporting half of the story, harping on a Wall Street Journal story stating that you cannot keep your doctor. It is a heart wrenching story about a gallbladder survivor who has now access to a comprehensive insurance, but it means that she has to change her doctors. As a breast cancer survivor, I am very sensitive to this issue, but this is problematic because of all the untold.

Once again, I understand the dilemna, I would not like to have to change my medical team (I am driving 80 miles to stay with the same one). But it is not as if Obamacare made the situation worse. It does not improve it.

As much as I believe that we should be able to choose our doctors, the truth is that it is NOT THE CASE. If you have an insurance, you have to choose among the doctors accepted by this insurance, which means that, if you change insurance, it is likely you will have to change your medical team.

Of course, we could have a better system which forces doctors to take every insurance and every insurance to take every doctor (at least in a geographical zone), but this would require MORE GOVERNMENT CONTROL. Does the WSJ want to have us believe that they are for more government control against free market?

Finally, does anybody know the number of insurance contracts that are cancelled every year by companies. I am asking because nobody seems to care about what the difference is.

So, yes, while the media are focusing on the horror stories (some of them may actually be real stories, though many have been debunked), they are not reporting the systematic sabotage by the GOP and many medical/insurance teams.

(See post #3 to understand the problem as described by UnitedHealthcare).

[frazzled]

1. What's a goldbladder?

I want one.

(Sorry, couldn't resist; and I appreciate your thoughtful post).

[Mass]

2. Ouch. Probably was thinking of the gold insurance companies and hospitals were making.

Corrected now.

[Mass]

3. Here comes the debunking of the story

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/11/04/2881581/wall-street-journal-horror-story-cancer-patient-losing-doctors-wrong/

But Sundby shouldn’t blame reform — United Healthcare dropped her coverage because they’ve struggled to compete in California’s individual health care market for years and didn’t want to pay for sicker patients like Sundby.

...

And then there is the company’s own justification for leaving. “The company’s plans reflect its concern that the first wave of newly insured customers under the law may be the costliest,” UHC Chief Executive Officer Stephen Helmsley told investors last October. “UnitedHealth will watch and see how the exchanges evolve and expects the first enrollees will have ‘a pent-up appetite’ for medical care. We are approaching them with some degree of caution because of that.”
Get that? The company packed its bags and dumped its beneficiaries because it wants its competitors to swallow the first wave of sicker enrollees only to re-enter the market later and profit from the healthy people who still haven’t signed up for coverage.
Sundby is losing her coverage and her doctors because of a business decision her insurer made within the competitive dynamics of California’s health care market. She’ll now have to enroll in a new plan that offers tighter networks of providers as a way to control health care costs and offer lower premiums. Eleven insurers are participating in Covered California and for the first time they won’t be able to deny coverage to Sundby or any other cancer patients.

So apparently, her doctors were covered by the insurance company, but the company refuses to do business anymore in the individual market.

Frankly, this pleads for single payer (assuming her doctors wanted to accept single payer) but I doubt this is something WSJ would stand for.