Perhaps the most damnable portion of Edie's story is drawn from her conclusion...one that many have concluded:Everyone now is clamoring about Affordable Care Act winners and losers. I am one of the losers.
My grievance is not political; all my energies are directed to enjoying life and staying alive, and I have no time for politics. For almost seven years I have fought and survived stage-4 gallbladder cancer, with a five-year survival rate of less than 2% after diagnosis. I am a determined fighter and extremely lucky. But this luck may have just run out: My affordable, lifesaving medical insurance policy has been canceled effective Dec. 31.
My choice is to get coverage through the government health exchange and lose access to my cancer doctors, or pay much more for insurance outside the exchange (the quotes average 40% to 50% more) for the privilege of starting over with an unfamiliar insurance company and impaired benefits.
Countless hours searching for non-exchange plans have uncovered nothing that compares well with my existing coverage. But the greatest source of frustration is Covered California, the state’s Affordable Care Act health-insurance exchange and, by some reports, one of the best such exchanges in the country. After four weeks of researching plans on the website, talking directly to government exchange counselors, insurance companies and medical providers, my insurance broker and I are as confused as ever. Time is running out and we still don’t have a clue how to best proceed.
Edie Sunby is not alone. Obamacare has a new message to seniors: take two aspirins and find yourself a new doctor in the morning. Thanks to Obamacare senior citizens are indeed losing their doctors.So if I go with a health-exchange plan, I must choose between Stanford and UCSD. Stanford has kept me alive—but UCSD has provided emergency and local treatment support during wretched periods of this disease, and it is where my primary-care doctors are.
Before the Affordable Care Act, health-insurance policies could not be sold across state lines; now policies sold on the Affordable Care Act exchanges may not be offered across county lines.
What happened to the president's promise, "You can keep your health plan"? Or to the promise that "You can keep your doctor"? Thanks to the law, I have been forced to give up a world-class health plan. The exchange would force me to give up a world-class physician.
For a cancer patient, medical coverage is a matter of life and death. Take away people's ability to control their medical-coverage choices and they may die. I guess that's a highly effective way to control medical costs. Perhaps that's the point.
Democrats passed it...and Republicans won't fight it...save for the few who've been vindicated tenfold in a matter of a few weeks. Now, many Democrats want to push off full implementation until after the 2014 midterms, while the Republican Party prays that this unworkable debacle somehow ends up being the first-ever entitlement to collapse on itself without the government propping it up for eternity. Fat chance.
It's past time to fight this...but it's never too late to do so. For Edie's sake...for your loved ones' sake. The warning flares were ignored, but the very real effects and events occurring cannot be.
H/t: NewsMax, GatewayPundit
Related links: Woman with cancer loses "world-class" insurance plan because of Obamacare
Obamacare train wreck: Stage IV gallbladder cancer survivor can’t keep her doctors
Despicable: WH smears cancer survivor who lost her insurance plan due to Obamacare
The Obamacare Chaos I Warned About Calls For Obama To Apologize To Ted Cruz
Why So Shocked? You Were NEVER Meant To Keep Your Health Insurance Under #ObamaCare
ADDENDUM: Like so many others, Rush covered this story this morning as well...
"If this isn’t a quasi-death panel, I don’t know what is. This article is a gut punch to Obamacare."
UPDATE: Edie Sundby responds to an Obama advisor, via CNN, about why she really lost her plan...
theRightScoop: Edie Littlefield Sundby, who wrote about her compelling cancer story in the WSJ over the weekend, was on CNN this evening and responded to Obama Senior Advisor Dan Pfieffer who said the reason she lost her plan wasn’t due to Obamacare. But she hits back saying that United Health Care stated they were at a tax disadvantage in the state of California and Sundby called it political cronyism.
She went on to say that thus far there are no Obamacare plans that comes close to what she had with United Health Care and this is a cause of great concern for her.
