My Obamacare 'Nightmare'!: In less than an hour, I signed up to save $3600/year...

[BradBlog]

In Less Than an Hour, I Signed Up for 'Obamacare' and Saved $300/month ($3,600/Year)

Well, that was easy. On Sunday, December 22, the day before the deadline for January 2014 insurance coverage under the Affordable Care Act (ACA or "Obamacare&quot , I signed up without problem. I used the California exchange website, it took me less than an hour, I'll be able to keep the same provider I had previously (and therefore, the same doctors), and I'll be saving almost exactly $300/month or $3,600/year…

FULL STORY: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=10436

[truedelphi]

1. I wish it was that simple for all of us in California.

I make just enough that each month, I'd be required to pay money I don't have. (I still have more month than money.)

Plus the choices I have are all complete crapola. One is Kaiser, which doesn't even have a facility here in my County! (I guess it was allowed as a choice due to many folks here who commute 2 hours into work and are probably within a mile or two of a Kaiser hospital while they are at work.)

Or I can choose Anthem, which totally screwed me on billing several years ago and I had to eat a significant cost of a procedure with them paying out not one red cent. (Despite all the hurdles in terms of time and expense I put out in meeting their requirements for the procedure.)

Also my doctor won't take Kaiser, or Anthem.

The third choice is a group I have never heard of. Very uninspiring choices, and certainly not something I would work a second job in order to be part of!

Plus having been in health care field for almost twenty years, the hospitals in California are mostly sub standard. And Goddess help you if you first need hospital, then a rehab hospital (Say for instance after a stroke) and then a nursing home. The nursing home field has tons of regulations, many of which are not followed. (For instance, all staff members employed at nursing homes are required to be possessing sufficient English if working in a neighborhood where 90% of the patients are English-speaking. Not adhered to at all!)

Then just a month ago, we had an entire nursing home where the owners bailed, without telling the patients' relatives the place was closing. If not for the compassion and common sense and due diligence of the JANITORIAL STAFF, those people left at the facility would have died!

[BradBlog]

2. Umm....

You've been "in [the] health care field for almost twenty years" but don't have money to buy insurance? Even with the subsidies offered by ACA?

Something seems curious about your response to me...

[truedelphi]

11. PM Sent. n/t

[underpants]

3. Kaiser is a closed network

you probably know this.

I used to work with Pharmaceutical claims and Kaiser was new to us here on the East Coast (they are expanding to Ga, Ohio, and Maryland). If you have Kaiser insurance you go to Kaiser Doctors, Kaiser Specialists, Kaiser Hospitals, and Kaiser brick n mortar stores.

[bluestate10]

4. Someone that "worked" in the California healthcare industry for 20 years should have

known that. I can envision a clinician, Nurse, Nurses Aide or anyone in Administration not knowing about health care company policies in regards to patients. I can see someone living in a small town, rural area not having much choice of plans, so that part of the story seems plausible.

[truedelphi]

10. I did know all about Kaiser.

I was a Kaiser member long enough for them to mis-diagnose my spouse, which caused a whole lot of pain and grief. And led in part to a medical bankruptcy. The only way I would go back to Kaiser is if they paid me two hundred a month to be part of their plan.

Nothing I said in my post indicates I don't know about Kaiser.What I know about Kaiser is still not relevant that somehow, somewhere, some official inside California's "California Covered" thinks it is okay that a County that doesn't have a single Kaiser run clinic, lab or hospital should include Kaiser as one of the only three choices available to that County's residents.

[truedelphi]

7. Actually and this might be the only good thing I EVER say about Kaiser -

Once in a while, they actually reach out to doctors who work at community clinics and put those doctors inside their network.

For instance, the clinic in West Marin Calif., had doctors who were part of the network. And the clinic was a community run, not Kaiser run, clinic.

Doesn't happen a lot, but sometimes they do the right thing.

It might be they will be reaching out to doctors in this area. I haven't heard.

[underpants]

13. I didn't know that

My experience was with pharmacies and pharmaceutical claims. Interesting.

[CatWoman]

12. yup

I used to have Kaiser, but when they went to that system I dumped them.

[underpants]

14. Merry Christmas Catwoman

[Tarheel_Dem]

5. Cool story, bro.

[NYC_SKP]

17. Are your choices WORSE than they were before Obamacare?

Because I think that's kind of the point of it, is to try to make things better (though not perfect).

Good luck, I'm confident you'll get what you need.

[japple]

6. That's wonderful! I only hope stories like your get circulated far and wide, making

people in the non-participating states start asking their governors, reps., senators "why can't I have this without all of your bullshit?"

[Beach Rat]

8. Same Here!

I signed up yesterday in less than an hour and now for the first time in three years I'm covered. What a crummy law huh?

[MineralMan]

9. Good news!

[NYC_SKP]

15. Also less than one hour and I'm going to save $10,620/year in premiums compared to my COBRA.

$1,429 per month no more! Down to $544 per month!

[Cha]

16. Thanks Obamacare!

Good for you, Brad!

[Wounded Bear]

18. Nightmare, indeed...

You just cheated the insurance companies out of $3600 dollars in profits.

Aren't you ashamed of yourself?

[truedelphi]

19. Regardless of how positive people feel about their experiences with the ACA -

The tyrannical elephant in the room remains the same.

All this money, be it insurance payments a taxpayer pays to an insurer through the ACA or the subsidies somewhat offered to the poorer among us - all those monies are not improving our health care situation. Instead those monies go off to the Big Insurers.


There is also a mostly unacknowledged slam to actual health care, buried inside the 2,000 plus pages of the ACA. As in fact, to make the cost of the ACA palatable to his critics in Congress, Obama cut some 500 billions of dollars from the MediCare side of things, with some of the cuts expected to hit how much physicians are paid. (MediCare physicians were already retiring rather than deal with the small amounts of the payments received back in the 1990's, so how there will even be a possibility of a senior citizen receiving care from doctors is anyone's guess.)

Those ACA monies immediately go off to feed the Big Insurance companies. Countries that are aware of this have eliminated the expensive middle man, and the monies that get spent on health care are actually spent on health care.

We spend some 30% more per capita than other nations, receive an inferior product to boot, and so when stats are compiled, we realize that USA ranks 37th in terms of health, when compared to other nations.

New England Journal Citation re: the US' ranking: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp0910064

[BradBlog]

21. Regardless of how people feel about ACA...

Truedelphi said...

All this money, be it insurance payments a taxpayer pays to an insurer through the ACA or the subsidies somewhat offered to the poorer among us - all those monies are not improving our health care situation.

I will respectfully disagree with you. For those millions who have been able to get health care for the first time, or those who were kicked off their plans because they were sick, or those who were not able to get healthcare because they had preexisting conditions, or those younger people who were no longer covered by their parents plans (but now are) and got sick...and in many other cases, the ACA is, in fact, "improving our health care situation".

It is, as I noted in my original article (which this thread links to), decidedly imperfect, much less reformative than it should have or could have been, and arguably obscene that private insurers make anything off of sick people. I did not support, nor advocate for ACA. But to say that ACA is "not improving our health care situation" is simply untrue.

(MediCare physicians were already retiring rather than deal with the small amounts of the payments received back in the 1990's, so how there will even be a possibility of a senior citizen receiving care from doctors is anyone's guess.)

Yes, I used to hear that a lot on Fox "News". Never saw any actual substantive evidence of it, though I suspect there's a reason why. That someone should spend tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars on medical school, spend their lives making good money as a doctor, and then quit (to make ZERO) because some payments are lower than they were previously, doesn't really make a whole lotta sense, does it?

Why would someone want to make ZERO money rather than some (and, in almost every case, good money) as a doctor? To teach someone a lesson? As I say, with all due respect, shy of actual data showing evidence of some epidemic of doctors quitting the medical practice to make ZERO money, instead of making slightly less (maybe), I'll remain skeptical about that argument that I've heard time and again on Fox and friends.

[tabasco]

20. That's horrible!

Please stay strong in the face of this awful, cheaper insurance.