ObamaCare LinkSwarm for November 5, 2013

ObamaCare is the failure that keeps failing.

  • How many Americans might lose their insurance coverage due to ObamaCare? Try 68% of privately insured Americans.
  • Republicans tried to fix the rule that’s causing so many insurance companies to cancel policies due to ObamaCare. Democrats said no. Mary Landrieu, Jeanne Shaheen, Mark Pryor, Kay Hagan and Mark Begich all voted against grandfathering in insurance policies that didn’t have ObamaCare’s precious taxpayer-funded abortions.
  • Stage 4 cancer survivor Edie Sundby is among those having their policies cancelled due to ObamaCare:

    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.

    Two things have been essential in my fight to survive stage-4 cancer. The first are doctors and health teams in California and Texas: at the medical center of the University of California, San Diego, and its Moores Cancer Center; Stanford University’s Cancer Institute; and the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

    The second element essential to my fight is a United Healthcare PPO (preferred provider organization) health-insurance policy.

    Since March 2007 United Healthcare has paid $1.2 million to help keep me alive, and it has never once questioned any treatment or procedure recommended by my medical team. The company pays a fair price to the doctors and hospitals, on time, and is responsive to the emergency treatment requirements of late-stage cancer. Its caring people in the claims office have been readily available to talk to me and my providers.

    But in January, United Healthcare sent me a letter announcing that they were pulling out of the individual California market.

  • ObamaCare is great at one thing: Revealing your personal information. (Via Ace.)
  • ObamaCare is estimated to increase premiums about 41% across 49 states. State with largest hike? Nevada, at 179%. How’s that decision to reelect Harry Reid working out? (Also via Ace.)
  • That map shows Texas rates rising 26%, but for some Texans that hike will be as much as 158%.
  • Here’s notice to a man whose monthly premiums doubled to $934.99 thanks to ObamaCare.
  • Flowchart of President Obama’s “You can keep your plan, period” defenses. (Via Instapundit.)
  • The Humanitarian Tragedy of ObamaCare: “Before passage of the ACA, we had no free market in insurance or medical care. Both industries had long been cartelized in the states through licensing and other regulatory barriers to free competition. When people say that the medical market failed, they really should say that a government-business partnership failed. In light of that failure, it makes no sense to expand the partnership further under the central authority of the federal government, as the ACA does.”
  • Hey, lets put some liberal policy wonks in charge of a complex technical project. What could possibly go wrong? It’s like putting the guy who writes shipping regulations in charge of designing and building an aircraft carrier.
  • Like his employer, Paul Krugman is too dumb to admit he’s wrong.

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    This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 5th, 2013 at 8:10 AM and is filed under Economics, Media Watch, ObamaCare, Texas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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