Close relative's new Obamacare plan costs ~45% more per month with a higher deductible. Because 58 year old women just love paying for maternity insurance.
Close relative's new Obamacare plan costs ~45% more per month with a higher deductible. Because 58 year old women just love paying for maternity insurance.
Drive-by post without facts or context?Originally Posted by Dreadnaught
How much were her previous premiums, co-pays, and deductibles? What did her policy actually cover? Did it include preventive cancer screenings with no OOP costs? Was it one of those Catastrophic Junk plans?
Everyone will have to "share" (pool) maternity and reproductive health care costs. It would be too expensive for only "women of child-bearing age" to afford otherwise. Besides, men use IVF and/or surrogates for pregnancies, too.....even into their 70's.
Women are never going to need screenings for testicles, sperm motility, or prostate glands either, but we still help pay for that because it's the right thing to do.
Except it's not the right thing to do, especially not when done via government compulsion. Using that logic, we should force you to put 10% of your income into certain stocks that are deemed to be positive for the common good.
Weren't you one of the ones that supported the government forcing their employees to pay into their retirement?
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Social contracts for the Public Good are right and necessary, and help us function and prosper as a Nation, a Union of states. I have no problem with gov't regulations compelling the Insurance Industry to end their discriminatory, or price gouging practices....since it involves peoples' lives, and access to medical care.
(BTW, I think PPACA legislation should have happened decades ago, when it took federal law suits to end insurance underwriters "profiling" men for stereotypical "gay jobs" during the HIV/AIDs crisis, and denying them health/life insurance coverage.)
That's either weird logic or a strawman.Using that logic, we should force you to put 10% of your income into certain stocks that are deemed to be positive for the common good.A better analogy might be compulsory Public Education, using tax dollars, for the good of the nation. That means everyone contributes to schools and education in monetary ways, including people without children, and those whose kids are already out of school. Do you object to that, too, because teh gummit mandates it as part of the common good?
Who still owns a piece of GM? You and me and every USA citizen.
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
Affordable Care Act goes way behind just insurance marketplace regulation.
You should check out the news.
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/12/...g-stake-in-gm/
It follows the template Republicans and conservatives came up with in the 90's. Including the individual mandate, just like Romney's MassCare, that the Insurance Industry and Hospitals lobbied for.
You skipped over my comparison and question about compulsory school. Why do you suppose states are required to provide all children with a 12th grade public education? Why do you think states have laws about minimum age of withdrawal before HS graduation? Is that also teh big bad gummint being heavy-handed for the common good?
Please answer, I'm trying to understand how/why you're putting health and education in different compartments, when they both entail regulations and mandates.
Wow, the day of my post we take a $10 billion loss so Dread can say we don't own GM.
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
I don't think forbidding kids from working is the same as draining the water out of the insurance market and then forcing everyone to jump-in.It follows the template Republicans and conservatives came up with in the 90's. Including the individual mandate, just like Romney's MassCare, that the Insurance Industry and Hospitals lobbied for.
You skipped over my comparison and question about compulsory school. Why do you suppose states are required to provide all children with a 12th grade public education? Why do you think states have laws about minimum age of withdrawal before HS graduation? Is that also teh big bad gummint being heavy-handed for the common good?
Please answer, I'm trying to understand how/why you're putting health and education in different compartments, when they both entail regulations and mandates.
Bringing up think-tank creations from the 1990s doesn't make this abomination remotely Republican.
I had to pull all the Ziobanker tricks to pull that one off.Wow, the day of my post we take a $10 billion loss so Dread can say we don't own GM.
Wait, you think compulsory education was just to end child labor? Or was that an easy non-answer to avoid a direct question about health and education mandates for the Public Good?
The PPACA doesn't "drain" the Insurance market of anything, but stands to increase their business by millions of new policy holders. That's why they wanted the individual mandate and "compulsory" non-discrimination regulations -- so their competitors couldn't take market share by using different underwriting rules, deny coverage to subsets of people (sicker/older), or cherry-pick their actuarial pools.
It's historically correct. Republicans advocated for the individually-mandated, private health insurance model, as laid out by the Heritage Foundation. That was their answer to what they saw as "the abomination of HillaryCare". MA was the first state to put it into effect....with candidate Romney and (R) groups wanting all states to adopt the plan, too. They just couldn't get states to agree, and didn't want the federal government to intervene, so it remained a theoretical concept without traction.Bringing up think-tank creations from the 1990s doesn't make this abomination remotely Republican.
The '07 Presidential debates saw Clinton and Obama disagreeing, with Obama on the same side as (R) -- reluctant to legislate the individual mandate. But after lobbying from the Insurance Industry, and Hospitals going bankrupt from uncompensated care, Obama and congressional (D) yielded. It was politically impossible to create a single-payor system, or even have a public option or Medicare For All -- that was SSSocialism!
Your attempts at re-writing history, and using anti-ACA media buzz-words is pathetic and tiresome. Drive-by posts don't count as debate or discussion either, so until you put more thought and "meat in your beef", I won't bother replying.
$10 billion is not something to joke about.I had to pull all the Ziobanker tricks to pull that one off.
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
Welcome to the libertarian party!
Okay seriously, NOW you are concerned with 10B being frittered away by the government?
Brevior saltare cum deformibus viris est vita
Wow, looks like her deductible increase isn't even that insane.Drive-by post without facts or context?
How much were her previous premiums, co-pays, and deductibles? What did her policy actually cover? Did it include preventive cancer screenings with no OOP costs? Was it one of those Catastrophic Junk plans?
Everyone will have to "share" (pool) maternity and reproductive health care costs. It would be too expensive for only "women of child-bearing age" to afford otherwise. Besides, men use IVF and/or surrogates for pregnancies, too.....even into their 70's.
Women are never going to need screenings for testicles, sperm motility, or prostate glands either, but we still help pay for that because it's the right thing to do.
High Deductibles Fuel New Worries of Health-Law Sticker Shock
Some Lower-Cost Plans Carry Steep Deductibles, Posing Financial Challenge
By LESLIE SCISM and TIMOTHY W. MARTIN
Dec. 8, 2013 7:41 p.m. ET
As enrollment picks up on the HealthCare.gov website, many people with modest incomes are encountering a troubling element of the federal health law: deductibles so steep they may not be able to afford the portion of medical expenses that insurance doesn't cover.
The average individual deductible for what is called a bronze plan on the exchange—the lowest-priced coverage—is $5,081 a year, according to a new report on insurance offerings in 34 of the 36 states that rely on the federally run online marketplace.
That is 42% higher than the average deductible of $3,589 for an individually purchased plan in 2013 before much of the federal law took effect, according to HealthPocket Inc., a company that compares health-insurance plans for consumers. A deductible is the annual amount people must spend on health care before their insurer starts making payments.
The health law makes tax credits available to help cover insurance premiums for people with annual income up to four times the poverty level, or $45,960 for an individual. In addition, "cost-sharing" subsidies to help pay deductibles are available to people who earn up to 2.5 times the poverty level, or about $28,725 for an individual, in the exchange's silver policies.
But those limits will leave hundreds of thousands or more people with a difficult trade-off: They can pay significantly higher premiums for the exchange's silver, gold and platinum policies, which have lower deductibles, or gamble they won't need much health care and choose a cheaper bronze plan. Moreover, the cost-sharing subsidies for deductibles don't apply to the bronze policies.
That means some sick or injured people may avoid treatment so they don't rack up high bills their insurance won't cover, according to consumer activists, insurance brokers and public-policy analysts—subverting one of the health law's goals, which is to ensure more people receive needed health care. Hospitals, meantime, are bracing for a rise in unpaid bills from bronze-plan policyholders, said industry officials and public-policy analysts.
Because all health plans now are required to provide certain minimum benefits, "consumers may be tempted to shop on premium alone, not realizing that the out-of-pocket costs can have a dramatic effect upon the annual costs of health care," said Kevin Coleman, head of research and data at HealthPocket.
Mr. Coleman said he expects the high deductibles will "produce some reduction in medical-service use" for enrollees who don't qualify for subsidies.
Of course, millions of Americans who went without insurance before the health law are in better shape today, despite the high deductibles. They are covered for much of the cost of expensive health care such as cancer treatment or major operations that could be a financial catastrophe for people lacking insurance.
And deductibles had been growing for years. It is unclear how much deductibles would have risen for individually purchased policies if the health law didn't exist. But deductibles for employer-sponsored plans, which generally are much lower than for individually purchased policies, nearly doubled over the past seven years to $1,135 in 2013, according to a Deloitte study published this year.
Meantime, hospitals likely will be treating more people who have insurance than before the law, which means they will be paid by insurers for some services that formerly ended up as bad patient debt.
Federal health officials emphasize that the exchange's pricing tiers accommodate people's different situations, and give consumers better coverage of essential services including doctor visits for preventive care that are exempt from deductibles.
"In the current individual marketplace, consumers can face unlimited out-of-pocket expenses for plans with limited benefits and high deductibles, if they can even get coverage without being denied for a pre-existing condition," said Health and Human Services Department spokeswoman Joanne Peters. "In the new marketplace, out-of-pocket expenses are capped, there are no denials based on your health and you can compare plans to find one that meets your needs."
Total out-of-pocket expenses under bronze plans are capped at an annual $6,350 for individuals and $12,700 for families of four; some older policies left consumers liable for significantly more. These totals include all deductibles, copayments and coinsurance charges for covered medical services from in-network health-care providers.
The issue of deductibles is coming into sharper focus as more people enroll thanks to improvements to the HealthCare.gov website since its botched Oct. 1 rollout. An uptick in traffic at the site and new data from states that are operating their own exchanges indicate that enrollment is picking up, although federal officials haven't released specific enrollment numbers. President Barack Obama has endured an uproar over the cancellation of millions of individual-insurance policies after he promised repeatedly that people who liked their coverage could keep it. Many policyholders whose old plans were canceled because they don't meet the coverage standards of the health law are facing higher prices in the exchanges.
"They're seeing sticker shock" in transitioning to the more-comprehensive coverage, and "once they start to use the policy, they will see a second sticker shock" of high deductibles, said Jamie Court, president of public-interest group Consumer Watchdog in California.
For example, the patient's typical share of the cost of having a baby through normal delivery—$6,150, according to one insurer's estimate—would be almost entirely an out-of-pocket expense for a person holding a bronze policy with the average $5,081 deductible.
"The anger is going to grow, because people are really stretched to buy these policies, then they're going to have to reach into their pocket for another five grand before it does anything for them," Mr. Court said.
Gary Claxton, who co-directs a program for the study of health reform and private insurance at the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, said the bronze plans' high deductibles represent "a difficult part of the law." The amount "is certainly a lot for some," though for some early retirees with modest income but ample savings "it's probably a better choice."
Larry Harrison, an insurance agent in Las Vegas, said he constantly is reminding people to look beyond the premium when shopping for coverage. Older or sicker people who expect to be heavy medical-care users typically pick plans that cost more but have lower deductibles than bronze plans, he said.
On the other hand, many young and healthy consumers say, " 'OK, it's the law. I'll have to buy a plan,' and they go straight to the premium price," he said. "If something happens to them, they just tell me they'll deal with that [deductible] another day."
For a 40-year-old adult, the average monthly premium for a bronze plan is $295.51 a month, or $3,546 a year, according to HealthPocket. A typical silver plan costs $319.42 a month, or $3,833 a year, with a $2,907 deductible.
The average insured American spent $1,241 on out-of-pocket health-care expenses in 2012, according to Truven Health Analytics Inc., which analyzed medical claims from employers.
Moody's Investors Service in October cited several exchange-related risks that it said would pressure nonprofit hospitals' revenue in 2014, including growth in unpaid bills associated with the higher deductibles.
The American Hospital Association, which represents for-profit and nonprofit hospitals and other health-care providers, concurred that the higher deductibles "will likely lead to an increase in hospital bad debt," said Ashley Thompson, its deputy director for policy.
It isn't known how many bronze policies have been bought so far because the exchanges aren't releasing that level of detail, HealthPocket's Mr. Coleman said.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/...46211560398876
Probably not, in relative context to what her entire policy plan was before the PPACA. Look, if you want to dissect particulars, I'm in! But linking an article doesn't really count, unless you comment on the article's content.Wow, looks like her deductible increase isn't even that insane.
Remember, this data is for the individual insurance market...which has been operating in the shadows for years, without any way to compare comprehensive coverage, let alone premiums/deductibles as part of total costs. And those deductibles are usually for hospital ER or inpatient charges that begin in the thousands and can reach millions.
Most care has been transitioned to outpatient facilities, where those costs didn't even "count" against deductible costs in the individual market. That's what makes preventative care and screenings (without co-pays/deductibles) valuable in the new system....and reduces the likelihood that your 58 yr old female relative will even have to cough up OOP money for an ER visit or hospitalization.
Key word is employers, who help subsidize employee premiums. That's group insurance, not individual insurance.The average insured American spent $1,241 on out-of-pocket health-care expenses in 2012, according to Truven Health Analytics Inc., which analyzed medical claims from employers.
Key words being nonprofit and hospital -- providers who rely on government reimbursements for Medicaid, Medicare, Veterans, uninsured, and indigent patients. Those "unpaid bills" will most likely come from states that refused to expand Medicaid coverage, or create their own state insurance marketplace exchange.Moody's Investors Service in October cited several exchange-related risks that it said would pressure nonprofit hospitals' revenue in 2014, including growth in unpaid bills associated with the higher deductibles.
Again, only in states that refused to expand Medicaid coverage or the individual insurance market, retaining the status quo of a broken insurance market, heavily influenced by employer subsidies, and fee-for service hospital care.The American Hospital Association, which represents for-profit and nonprofit hospitals and other health-care providers, concurred that the higher deductibles "will likely lead to an increase in hospital bad debt," said Ashley Thompson, its deputy director for policy.
Refreshing moment of self-reflection and even pique from the New York Times.
December 13, 2013
With Affordable Care Act, Canceled Policies for New York Professionals
By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS
Many in New York’s professional and cultural elite have long supported President Obama’s health care plan. But now, to their surprise, thousands of writers, opera singers, music teachers, photographers, doctors, lawyers and others are learning that their health insurance plans are being canceled and they may have to pay more to get comparable coverage, if they can find it.
They are part of an unusual, informal health insurance system that has developed in New York, in which independent practitioners were able to get lower insurance rates through group plans, typically set up by their professional associations or chambers of commerce. That allowed them to avoid the sky-high rates in New York’s individual insurance market, historically among the most expensive in the country.
But under the Affordable Care Act, they will be treated as individuals, responsible for their own insurance policies. For many of them, that is likely to mean they will no longer have access to a wide network of doctors and a range of plans tailored to their needs. And many of them are finding that if they want to keep their premiums from rising, they will have to accept higher deductible and co-pay costs or inferior coverage.
“I couldn’t sleep because of it,” said Barbara Meinwald, a solo practitioner lawyer in Manhattan.
Ms. Meinwald, 61, has been paying $10,000 a year for her insurance through the New York City Bar. A broker told her that a new temporary plan with fewer doctors would cost $5,000 more, after factoring in the cost of her medications.
Ms. Meinwald also looked on the state’s health insurance exchange. But she said she found that those plans did not have a good choice of doctors, and that it was hard to even find out who the doctors were, and which hospitals were covered. “It’s like you’re blindfolded and you’re told that you have to buy something,” she said.
The people affected include not just writers, artists, doctors and the like, but also independent tradespeople, like home builders or carpenters, who work on their own.
Some have received notices already; others, whose plans have not yet expired, will soon receive letters in the mail. It is unclear exactly how many New Yorkers are affected; according to state health officials, as many as 400,000 independent practitioners get health insurance through job-related group plans, but that number also includes people who receive coverage through their spouses’ employers.
The predicament is similar to that of millions of Americans who discovered this fall that their existing policies were being canceled because of the Affordable Care Act. The crescendo of outrage led to Mr. Obama’s offer to restore their policies, though some states that have their own exchanges, like California and New York, have said they will not do so.
But while those policies, by and large, had been canceled because they did not meet the law’s requirements for minimum coverage, many of the New York policies being canceled meet and often exceed the standards, brokers say. The rationale for disqualifying those policies, said Larry Levitt, a health policy expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation, was to prevent associations from selling insurance to healthy members who are needed to keep the new health exchanges financially viable.
Siphoning those people, Mr. Levitt said, would leave the pool of health exchange customers “smaller and disproportionately sicker,” and would drive up rates.
Alicia Hartinger, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said independent practitioners “will generally have an equal level of protection in the individual market as they would have if they were buying in the small-group market.” She said the president’s offer to restore canceled polices temporarily applied to association coverage, if states and insurers agreed. New York has no plans to do so.
Donna Frescatore, executive director of New York State of Health, the state insurance exchange, said that on a positive note, about half of those affected would qualify for subsidized insurance under the new health exchange because they had incomes under 400 percent of the poverty level, about $46,000 for an individual.
But many professionals make too much money to qualify for the subsidies, and even if they are able to find comparably priced insurance, the new policies do not have the coverage they are accustomed to.
David Rubin, vice president of Teiget, the Entertainment Industry Group Insurance Trust, which had served as a broker for about 1,000 members of creative guilds, said a big complaint was that in New York City and much of the state, the new individual plans both on and off the exchange did not allow patients to go to doctors out of network. “All these people had these customized plans which are better than most of the things out there, and most of them are saving only a small amount of money,” Mr. Rubin said.
Roy Lyons, managing director of Marsh U.S. Consumer, an insurance brokerage, said he had heard complaints from physicians, lawyers, pharmacists and optometrists. “At first they think it’s the bar association making the decision or the insurance company doing it,” Mr. Lyons said. “We have to explain that this is the Affordable Care Act; that’s what was put into law. Once they understand, they’re less emotional, but they’re not happy with it.”
Among those affected are members of the Authors Guild; the Advertising Photographers of America; the Suzuki Association of the Americas, a music teachers organization; the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators; the New York City Bar Association; and the New York County Medical Society. (One group, the Freelancers Union, negotiated a one-year exemption with the state.)
“One of the reasons to join a society is to get health insurance,” said Dr. Paul N. Orloff, president of the New York County Medical Society. Even doctors pay a lot for coverage, he said, because the days of trading medical care with colleagues are long gone. “In the old days, professional courtesy was the norm,” Dr. Orloff said.
The medical society has not yet formally notified its solo practitioners, because their insurance plans do not expire until April. But those letters will be going out soon, officials said.
It is not lost on many of the professionals that they are exactly the sort of people — liberal, concerned with social justice — who supported the Obama health plan in the first place. Ms. Meinwald, the lawyer, said she was a lifelong Democrat who still supported better health care for all, but had she known what was in store for her, she would have voted for Mitt Romney.
It is an uncomfortable position for many members of the creative classes to be in.
“We are the Obama people,” said Camille Sweeney, a New York writer and member of the Authors Guild. Her insurance is being canceled, and she is dismayed that neither her pediatrician nor her general practitioner appears to be on the exchange plans. What to do has become a hot topic on Facebook and at dinner parties frequented by her fellow writers and artists.
“I’m for it,” she said. “But what is the reality of it?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/14/ny...essionals.html
Considering they were already privately insured, if there is a demand/market for it, insurers would create similar plans that they already have (tailored for their needs.. whatever that means for artists). Over here you're also mandated to get private insurance, and most insurers have special packages tailored for students, for example. I don't see why the same couldn't happen for artists/self employed, if there are special plans they want/need, and there are enough people. If their problem is that they supported a healthcare overhaul but expected to be treated in a special way, I can't really feel bad about them finding out they aren't special.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
Are the packages age/profession restricted in any way? EG if I like my student plan, can I keep it even when I'm a 30 year old freelance Web designer?
From the article:
"....the president’s offer to restore canceled polices temporarily applied to association coverage, if states and insurers agreed. New York has no plans to do so.
“At first they think it’s the bar association making the decision or the insurance company doing it,” Mr. Lyons said. “We have to explain that this is the Affordable Care Act; that’s what was put into law. Once they understand, they’re less emotional, but they’re not happy with it.”
" (One group, the Freelancers Union, negotiated a one-year exemption with the state.)
Sounds like it's the guilds/associations that made the decision not to negotiate an exemption or extension with NY state, or their insurance carriers. Maybe they should question their membership dues, and how much went to paid "brokers" in exchange for lower premiums, instead of better policies?
Finally, people are getting educated about our borked system, created and controlled by the Insurance Industry, including those who assumed they had great coverage at good rates. It's about time everyone realized the amount of wheeling and dealing, "negotiating" special group rates, creating Preferred Networks, and extra fees/money changing hands, that have nothing to do with actual healthcare.
It's pretty rich to see physicians complain, let alone their Medical Society, when they're the ones who helped create PPOs and restricted Networks with Insurance Carriers. Limiting their own "participation" as a provider is just fine, until it affects them as patients?
Some good news that could help make prescriptions more affordable (and actually medically necessary) -- GlaxoSmithKline will no longer pay physicians to attend their seminars or prescribe their meds, or reimburse sales reps based on numbers of scripts written.
http://www.gsk.com/media/press-relea...-practice.html
It's not really a component of the PPACA, and the US has other pharmaceutical industry regulations addressing this problem....but it's still a good thing for patients. Fee-for-service and/or fee-for-use should be replaced with outcome-based standards that actually help patients, instead of lining pockets along the way. IMHO.
Q: would young 'invincibles' be more likely to buy health insurance (instead of paying the fine) if it covers Dental and Vision?
I think so, since those can be fairly costly OOP expenses, and often the first thing they might go without/delay when budgets get tight. I'm not sure how the Exchanges offer that coverage, or if it's available at bottom tiers and not considered a 'platinum or gold' level service. Does anyone know more specifics?
A health system where special interest groups negotiate exemptions right and left makes an oxymoron of the term "health care reform".From the article:
"....the president’s offer to restore canceled polices temporarily applied to association coverage, if states and insurers agreed. New York has no plans to do so.
“At first they think it’s the bar association making the decision or the insurance company doing it,” Mr. Lyons said. “We have to explain that this is the Affordable Care Act; that’s what was put into law. Once they understand, they’re less emotional, but they’re not happy with it.”
" (One group, the Freelancers Union, negotiated a one-year exemption with the state.)
Sounds like it's the guilds/associations that made the decision not to negotiate an exemption or extension with NY state, or their insurance carriers. Maybe they should question their membership dues, and how much went to paid "brokers" in exchange for lower premiums, instead of better policies?
Finally, people are getting educated about our borked system, created and controlled by the Insurance Industry, including those who assumed they had great coverage at good rates. It's about time everyone realized the amount of wheeling and dealing, "negotiating" special group rates, creating Preferred Networks, and extra fees/money changing hands, that have nothing to do with actual healthcare.
It's pretty rich to see physicians complain, let alone their Medical Society, when they're the ones who helped create PPOs and restricted Networks with Insurance Carriers. Limiting their own "participation" as a provider is just fine, until it affects them as patients?
And a Health System that's dominated by for-profit insurance companies isn't really a Health Care System. That's why the ACA should have been tougher on "reforming" the Insurance Industry that acts as its own "special interest group". IMO.
Questions For Americans About New Health Insurance Exchanges:
1. If you don't sign up by the deadline (Dec 23) are you on your own for the whole next year? There is an abundance of information on the CA site but most of it is useless gibberish.
2. What happens if your financial situation changes dramatically during your coverage? Are you stuck with the same premium for the entire year?
Last edited by Being; 12-20-2013 at 01:51 AM.
Faith is Hope (see Loki's sig for details)
If hindsight is 20-20, why is it so often ignored?
I imagine the deadlines will be pushed in some way.
If your financial situation changes, I also suspect there will eventually be a way to claim more subsidies. Or that insurance companies will have a back-door way to bill the government premiums. Either way it'll be a bailout.
The deadline is mid March. The cut-off date for coverage on Jan. 1 is enrollment plus a paid first premium by 12/23.
Not sure how the insurance companies will treat policy/premium changes -- but if they want to keep 'clients' it would behoove them to roll-over into a more affordable policy, without a waiting period.
Well, I was close to having coverage on Jan 1, but I'm not letting today's "deadline" force me into buying a policy that doesn't meet my needs, or budget. I might be able to get a better plan, with a more affordable premium, by dealing directly with local provider networks. They already "own" the Hospitals, outpatient services, testing facilities, and most of the physicians to begin with.
Wow they just keep extending the deadlines over and over. It will be a miracle if a substantial portion of these people get this crappy coverage by Jan 1.
One of my friends got a plan with a very large deductible. Which is too bad because he really needs to start seeing some doctors about things and I'm not sure his newfound coverage will really motivate him given the deductible. But now that he's paying the premiums, he will have less money to spend on ad-hoc services like City MD. Thanks, Obamacare.
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