Thursday, February 6, 2014

Out-of-Network: Obamacare enrollees 'frustrated' that doctors, hospitals aren't playing (UPDATE)

Here's the L.A.Times piece that's abuzz today...and we'll see more of these pop up as implementation rolls on, even from other lib rags...
LATimes: After overcoming website glitches and long waits to get Obamacare, some patients are now running into frustrating new roadblocks at the doctor's office.

A month into the most sweeping changes to healthcare in half a century, people are having trouble finding doctors at all, getting faulty information on which ones are covered and receiving little help from insurers swamped by new business.

Experts have warned for months that the logjam was inevitable. But the extent of the problems is taking by surprise many patients — and even doctors — as frustrations mount.

Aliso Viejo resident Danielle Nelson said Anthem Blue Cross promised half a dozen times that her oncologists would be covered under her new policy. She was diagnosed last year with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and discovered a suspicious lump near her jaw in early January.

But when she went to her oncologist's office, she promptly encountered a bright orange sign saying that Covered California plans are not accepted.

"I'm a complete fan of the Affordable Care Act, but now I can't sleep at night," Nelson said. "I can't imagine this is how President Obama wanted it to happen."
Hold it right there. WAKE UP CALL! Aliso, this is PRECISELY how Barack wanted it to happen. Destroy the private health care market completely with Obamacare; then when it all collapses, turn to a Big Government single-payer system (wait lines, health rationing and death panels in tow). He want YOU to come to THEM for your every need. This was never about your health...it was always about control.

Related link: Obama Fans Can't Believe Their President Wanted This to Happen

And this is not just a California thing...it's happening from Oregon doctor shortages...
tRS: Thousands of new Obamacare signups in Oregon are finding out they don’t have access to a doctor because there just aren’t enough to match the demand:

...to New York hospitals being forced to turn down cancer patients...


FreeBeacon: Stage-four cancer patient Bruce Johnston seems to be the latest victim of Obamacare’s terrible rollout, as his insurance under Obamacare was recently denied at Stony Brook University Hospital.

When told the hospital did not take his insurance, Johnston was shocked. “It leaves me high and dry,” Johnston said. “I mean, this is nothing to fool around with. This is my life.”

The hospital said it currently does not accept any of the 8 plans offered by the New York state exchange, citing low reimbursement fees that “wouldn’t come close” to the cost of providing treatment. The hospital has had to negotiate on a case by case basis with the insurance companies to cover patients in predicaments like Johnston’s.
...and all businesses in between, forced to choose whether to dump benefits or pass Obamacare costs along to employees...
HotAir: Remember when Democrats sold ObamaCare as a system that “bends the cost curve downward”? Tell that to employers, who face a make or break decision point this year when the employer mandate comes into full force for 2015. Do companies dump health insurance in order to control their costs, or pay the higher costs and pass them along to employees as reductions in compensation? Tim Armstrong explains to CNBC that employers — even one as large as AOL — can’t avoid what is a $7 million question to him (via Daniel Halper):

Employers, doctors, institutions, AMERICA can't afford the so-called Affordable Care Act (btw, which still won't cover everyone).

At some point, Aliso and millions more have to face facts that socialized medicine is a total disaster.

UPDATE: More bait-and-switch in California (via tRS)...



I'll say it...WE TOLD YOU SO!