Obamacare Update

Four consecutive weeks of Obamacare columns is enough to make anyone sick. But an update is clearly in order.

The latest ACA-related fiasco is the story, much touted by Republicans, that millions of Americans are receiving cancellation notices from their insurers because their policies don’t meet the requirements of ACA for coverage. Between that and the fact that it’s basically impossible to buy a healthcare plan online (you can register, but registration isn’t buying), it is entirely possible that by January 1st there will be more  people uninsured than before.

Granted, Republicans don’t enjoy any credibility when it comes to healthcare. After all, their solution was none at all. They were fine with the current, crappy, who-cares-if-you-die system. But that doesn’t mean the ACA is an improvement.

And if Democrats keep spouting talking points like the one I saw all over MSNBC yesterday, encapsulated perfectly by this post,  which I found on Daily Kos this morning, they shan’t long have any cred left themselves:

They are trash policies that would have left policy-holders paying thousands out of their own pockets at time of claims. Non-guaranteed renewable, limited in benefit coverage, no preventive care, and most have absolutely no drug coverage. The maximum limit of coverage, which is a lifetime maximum, and is soon reached in this day and age.

The insurance companies issuing these policies knew they had three years to comply with the mandates of the Affordable Care Act, and they decided this was the way to get rid of that line of business, and rack up more premiums on better plans. The small percentage of people whose policies are being canceled should really thank God that it is forcing them to re-look at what they have in the way of health care. Most don’t even know they had inferior policies they were paying for.

Let’s bring this country of under-insureds up to normal and reasonable limits for the 21st century.

The thing is, Democrats, President Obama didn’t tell the public “If you like your current plan, you can keep it unless it doesn’t meet the new standards.” There was no qualifier. Instead he said, over and over, so often that even Americans remember, “If you like your current plan, you can keep it.” The qualifier matters.

Democrats are whistling past the graveyard if they think this doesn’t matter. Getting a cancellation letter is a major pain in the ass. People who thought they were fine and didn’t have to worry about the ACA now have to break their routines, take hours out of their lives, to deal with shopping for new coverage. They’re not going to be happy about it, no matter how much they’re told their old plan was shitty and worthless in the first place.

Sure, I’d rather drive a Dodge Challenger than a Honda Civic. But what Obama is doing is pulling me over, towing away my Civic and telling me I’ll be fined — and have to walk home — unless I buy a Challenger that I may or may not be able to afford. That’s pretty bad, but the last thing he’d better add is that he’s doing me a favor.

So in other news, I received a letter from nystateofhealth, the New York state ACA marketplace. A letter. Via snail mail. Good news! “We have determined that you are eligible to enroll in a qualified health plan through the Marketplace,” it reads. “Your health insurance plan will begin shortly after you have selected a health plan and paid the premium payment (if applicable).

I went online right away to log in. But…

All my personal data, all the information I spent hours uploading, including three months of personal financial statements related to my self-employment business as a cartoonist and writer, were gone!

So I got on the phone. The phone mail tree is byzantine but eventually a person picked up, accessed my account, and confirmed that indeed, I do qualify for coverage. “Can I choose a plan through you?” I asked the agent.

“No,” he replied, “you’ll get a letter, probably in early December. Go ahead and disregard the one you received.”
Really? Disregard it? What will the second letter say?

“You’ll be able to choose the plan through the letter,” he said. Twice, because I made him.

“Through the mail?”

“Yes. Then your plan will be effective January 1st.”

Let’s hope this is true. And that it works.

Even so, I wonder: why’d they bother with the websites in the first place? Why didn’t they just do the whole thing by mail?

I’ll let you know what happens. Or doesn’t.

9 Comments.

  • @Ted: Even you are letting Obama off the hook with your comments. For shame.

    It doesn’t fucking matter if people with cancelled plans will get better coverage — which is what the pundits you’re criticizing are saying.

    It also doesn’t fucking matter if it’s an inconvenience to buy a new plan because your current plan was cancelled, which is what you’re saying.

    Here’s all that matters: The President lied! Ok? It’s that fucking simple! Nothing else fucking matters! He lied right through his teeth, like he does all the time — only this time it was blatant because reports say he KNEW what he was saying was not true!

    Christ, when Ted Rall won’t man up and simply state the facts — that Obama lied — it’s a sad day.

    • Yes. Obama lied. Obviously.

      I may be many things, but I’m not someone who is afraid to say that Obama lied.

      • “Yes. Obama lied. Obviously.”

        If it’s so obvious, why does the word “lie” or words “Obama lied” appear exactly zero times in this piece?

        “I may be many things, but I’m not someone who is afraid to say that Obama lied.”

        If you’re not afraid to say Obama lied, why does the word “lie” or words “Obama lied” appear exactly zero times in this piece?

      • I’m also not afraid to say that the sky is blue, but since it’s obvious, I don’t write it in my piece.

  • I fear Mr Rall is about the only person with any actual data that a reasonable person can find convincing.

    The Tea Party types have a list of at least 15 outrageous lies. Deadline 15 Dec or pay a $5,000 penalty, plus about 13 more on Politifact, e.g. Death Panels, massive lay-offs as employers cannot afford to keep employees AND pay for the ACA, etc., etc.

    Several Tea Party types went on Fox and said their premiums increased, but then other news sources (CNN, NYT) said they were all lying.

    Of course, Politifact says you can keep your doctor on your ACA policy, something Mr Rall says does NOT seem to be true. And, given the standard policies I’ve seen, Mr Rall would seem to be closer to the truth than Politifact. Standard insurance policies that pay for ‘any doctor’ pay a much smaller percentage for physicians who are ‘out of network’, making them unaffordable. Of course, if you don’t mind paying 100% yourself, you CAN keep your doctor under the ACA, no matter what the policy covers. So Politifact isn’t completely false.

    On the Obamabot news sources, the comments they’ve allowed were, ‘The ACA reduced my premiums by $1,000 a month.’ An Obamabot comment on gocomics was, ‘I don’t need the ACA, but my friend had his premiums cut by 50% for much more comprehensive coverage.’ etc., etc.

    Based on my own unsuccessful attempt to get onto the Texas exchange, and Mr Rall’s detailed agonies, it looks like the Obamabots are just as mendacious as the Tea Party types.

    So I have no idea what’s really going on.

    • The tea party types are definitely lying. All those things about death panels and big fines are generated in some boiler room operation in Texas. I wouldn’t trust any of those. The sad truth is that the affordable care act is exactly what many of us on the left said it was back in 2009: a sellout to the big insurance companies. Basically, the old system continues, but rather than allow the 45 million to 50 million Americans who could not afford health insurance under the old system to continue to be uninsured, they are required to buy it on their own.

      Of course, the vast majority of these people don’t have enough money, that’s why they can’t buy it, so there are subsidies to allow them to cover some of those costs. The problem is, nobody can find out how much their subsidies are because the programming of the Obamacare websites doesn’t allow them to find out. I have no doubt that, based on the formulations that I’ve seen elsewhere, the tax system will provide a lot of subsidies for a lot of people. However, the bigger question, and I feel like a Republican for saying this, is why the federal government should subsidize private insurers?

      Under the affordable care act, the big insurance companies can charge whatever they want, it appears that in fact they are increasing their premiums by at least 20% to 25% across-the-board. Because of the lack of price controls, people who fall in that margin of less than four times the Federal poverty rate are going to receive subsidies to pay these insurance companies. Seems to me that if the government is going to pay for something, they ought to have some kind of downward pressure on the pricing.

      • I tried to put the Tea attacks into two paragraphs. In my first paragraph were the lies that anyone who can read knows are blatantly false.

        Eventually, the smarter Tea types got beaten until they switched to the Rall attack that I put in my second Tea paragraph: it’s too expensive, and the web site doesn’t work. But they made such fools of themselves with the first paragraph lies that, when they’re called liars for saying the ACA isn’t all that affordable, and we’re told that the site worked perfectly, but had problems (like the schoolchild no one liked) because it was too popular, most people believe the Obamabots. After all, the President went on TV on 1 October to say a young woman with a brain tumour would get full access to the best physicians and hospitals for a total out-of-pocket expense of less than $100 a month thanks to the ACA. And some Obamabots have posted on the New York Times comments that the ACA reduces their healthcare expenses by about $1,000 a month (I personally never had $1,000 a month disposable income to spend on healthcare after taxes, rent, and groceries, so who ARE these people?).

        On Saturday morning, 2 Nov, on the NPR show ‘Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me,’ one of the panellists said he’d logged in. No problems. He said he was just curious, since he had employer-provided insurance (but with employee premiums, deductibles, and co-pays). He said he found an ACA plan that was much better than the one his employer was providing, so he signed up. True? Joke? Whatever. Most listeners (who have employer healthcare, or, being NPR listeners, more likely have Medicare) don’t need to log in, won’t bother, and will believe the panellist.

  • Wow. Now that’s conviction.

  • alex_the_tired
    November 7, 2013 8:34 AM

    Ted,

    Once cavil. Obama lied badly. When someone lies well, it is nowhere near as offensive as the easily falsified whoppers he’s been cranking out.

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