After overcoming website glitches and long waits to get Obamacare, some patients are now running into frustrating new roadblocks at the doctor's office.Maybe someone should have read the bill before it was passed so we'd have known what was in it. I can recall Candidate Obama promising that all bills would be posted online before--well, we know what his promises are worth.
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."
On the upside, this vignette turns a popular saying about socialism on its head. "Socialism means standing in line" isn't true here, because these people can't even find a line to wait in.
5 comments:
Darren, I must respectfully disagree. It's working perfectly from B Hussein Obama's viewpoint. He'll screw up healthcare so badely the only thing left will be single payer. Which is his intent.
How the hell did this ever get so bad.
You may be right, Mike, about Obama's intentions ... but it isn't the only thing left. I've written about this before ...but 1)foster competition by forcing employers NOT to provide health care, but returning their contribution to employees and allowing interstate policies; 2) allowing tax deductible medical savings accounts (or requiring themas a deduction from the paycheck); 3) tort reform; 4) requiring that every health care plan must have a component that provides for catastrophic care (which is surprisingly inexpensive, if everyone pays in) 5) limited government involvement to 'pool' customers together ... then allowing HMOs to bid on them ...low bid wins ...5) not providing treatment to people without insurance or
Mike, I try to live by the dictum that one should not ascribe to malevolence that which is more probably explained by incompetence. Obama and the Gang might have stumbled into what you suggested, but I don't think they're smart or sly enough to have planned it out in advance.
"...should have read the bill before it was passed"
but, but,but Nancy said we'd only find out what was in it AFTER they passed it?
Nancy KNEW what crap WAS in it and DIDN'T want anyone else to know!
I ascribe to the same belief although brevity favors my formulation by a small margin - never ascribe to design what's explainable by incompetence.
I think that view much better explains the Obamacare debacle then that they screwed up on purpose in service of a diabolically clever plan.
Not that that sort of thing's impossible - the burning of the Reichstag comes to mind - but the all-too-human temptation is to view all such singular occurrences through that lens because doing so makes the conspiratorialist cleverer then the conspirers. Others may be fooled by the facile, public explanation but not I! My superior intellect pierces the veil of misdirection!
But the history of large software projects argues against that view. About a third are considered successes, although on closer examination that turns out to be more of a political determination then technical, a third are clearly scaled back from their original goals and a third are abandoned.
The proponents of Obamacare won't allow the last outcome but they'll have to settle for the second, claim the first and hope public anger doesn't fuel repeal or repeal by the death of a thousand cuts.
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