Wynton Hall:
On Sunday, the New York Times reported that “many insurers are significantly limiting the choices of doctors and hospitals available to consumers” due to Obamacare.
As Times reporter Robert Pear notes, “having an insurance card does not guarantee access to specialists or other providers.”
Health insurance companies say that under Obamacare’s government healthcare exchanges, the networks will offer a budget rate version of what is available in the commercial market.
“The networks will be narrower than the networks typically offered to large groups of employees in the commercial market,” Cigna spokesperson Joseph Mondy said.
Several large insurance companies have cherry picked the states where offering coverage inside the government’s Obamacare health exchanges remains viable and have opted out of the states where participation is not profitable.
“Doing so enables health plans to offer lower premiums,” says a new study by the Health Research Institute of PricewaterhouseCoopers. “But the use of narrow networks may also lead to higher out-of-pocket expenses, especially if a patient has a complex medical problem that’s being treated at a hospital that has been excluded from their health plan.”
The new system will also mean lengthy–and potentially life-threatening–drives as fewer facilities are available to patients as part of Obamacare, says Monadnock Community Hospital in Peterborough, NH, chief executive Peter L. Gosline.
Wait….weren’t these the same things I and multitudes of other physicians were saying would be the reality of obamacare? Higher costs and less choice? Much less service and much greater inconvenience?
I can’t WAIT to see the mental gymnastics of the obamanauts to try to refute these points coming from the NYT now….
Obamacare must be destroyed. Democrats must be held accountable for all eternity for shoving this evil socialist garbage down our throats.
and REID has the nerve to insult those with TED CRUZ to work on defunding it,
according to what the AMERICANS want,
what a bunch of sicko DEMOCRATES, THEY WILL TRY TO PASS GARBAGE TO THE PEOPLE,
IF THEY ARE TOLD TO BY THE LEADER,
Due to Obamacare? Nowhere does the author of the New York Times article state that this is due to Obamacare. The author is reporting on a strategy that health insurers are adopting to market a low cost product. Obamacare does not eliminate differences between high cost, Cadillac healthcare plans and the most inexpensive healthcare plans available. No one ever claimed that it would. Are Obamacare critics actually suggesting that they expected all plans would provide identical levels of convenience, choice, and coverage, regardless of the cost?
@Greg:
The entire article is showing what insurers are doing in respons e to obamacare requirements for exchange plans. Why on earth would these insurers do this limiting of providers other than because of obamacare?
@Pete, #4:
Private sector insurers are attempting to devise ways to boost their profit margins, exactly as they have done in the past and the same as they will always to do under any new circumstances that present themselves.
Obamacare requires them to offer low cost health insurance to a market sector they’ve never bothered with before. The least expensive plans designed for that new market sector will offer less convenience, less choice, and the lowest assortment of benefits that the law requires. Why would anyone expect an industry that’s primarily focused on profit to do otherwise?
There will now be available health insurance that millions who were previously excluded from the market will be able to afford, and minimum standards concerning what coverage such insurance must provide. No one who is presently insured is required to downgrade from their current level of coverage to a new bargain-basement plan.
@Greg:
Your understanding of the economics of insurance is inherently stilted by your leftist lenses. Yes for profit companies have to make a profit to survive, but if they offer a lousy product, not enough people buy it for the company to make a profit, and they go out of business. The government does not have to make a profit so there is no incentive to provide a product that people want to buy. Hence the need to force people to buy something they do not want or need. What tbe left is saying is that because the pre-obamacare insurance product did not give itself away to everyone the obamacare product is somehow better because it claims to be a available to everyone. The fact that Obama lied when he stated one could keep his previous insurance and doctor if one liked them, as well as the lie that costs would go down for the average person by $2500 per year when in fact such costs are going up (while quality is being lowered) is ignored by tbe left in the misguided pursuit of unattainable “fairness”. What obamacare boils down to is screwing up health care for the vast majority of people to buy the votes of the uneducated and uninformed through false claims of cutting costs. The fact that subsidies – to be paid for by taxpayers – even have to be part of this plan is an admission that the program greatly increases costs. The fact that congress circumvented the negative impact of obamacare by deciding that taxpayers will be hit again to pay for polticians and their staff members while multiple businesses are dumping workers onto the exchanges and cutting employee hours because the costs of obamacare are too unaffordable is highly unethical, and another tacit admission that obamacare is a horrible disaster.
REMEMBER THE ALAMO SAID DR BEN CARSON,
it’s for THE PEOPLE TO USE THEIR POWER,
he said stand your ground, do not retreat,
that’s how we won the ALAMO
if they would have used it previously, we would not be in this mess,
he’s good, and can say it the way it is,
THE WHITE HOUSE SPEND THE MONEY BEFORE THEY GET IT,
IS IN IT A DANGEROUS WAY TO LEAD A COUNTRY like this one?
they are waiting he said to pay the bills they already spend,
the PEOPLE HAS TO PAY THEIR BILLS OR THEY LOOSE THEIR HOUSE,OBAMA should pay his bills
AFTER HE GET THE MONEY or get the same as the people,
it’s the first rule a big runaway spender learn when he is face with no money to pay his bills but he doesn’t learn fast enough to ruin his dependant and friends,
who loan him money
and never get it back,
OBAMA HAS AN UNLIMITED SPENDING MONEY FROM THE TAXPAYERS, HE MANAGE TO SPEND IT ALL
AND MOUNT A MANY TRILLION DEBT WHICH THE PEOPLE WILL HAVE TO PAY,
ARE YOU ANXIOUS TO SEE HIM LEAVE? YES
the DEMOCRATS made the law in the dark of the night away from the REPUBLICANS,
NOT ONE REPUBLICAN WAS WITNESS , NOT ONE REPUBLICAN WAS CONSULTED,
THEY REVEAL THERE MULTIPLE THOUSANDS OF PAGES THEY DID NOT EVEN READ,
THAT’S MORE TERRORIST LIKE WHO THEY ACCUSE TO BE TERRORIST,
AMERICA CHECK IT UP,
TED CRUZ HAS AWAKEN A BUNCH OF DEMOCRATS JUST TO INSULT HIM,
IT MEAN HIS PLAN WORKED PERFECT,