Reports are being made of a White House "war room" setting in which the Obama administration is preparing for widespread panic. The cause of the panic? Realization by enrollees in Obamacare that they will not be able to keep their doctors. Not keeping their current plan was bad news enough, but this is worse.
Who carries your insurance is an impersonal relationship. But the relationship you have with your doctor is very personal. Soon those who sign up for Obamacare are going to find out that the second lie told by Obama may be the most devastating one.
This is the big unexploded landmine in the ObamaCare mine field. There have been little booms about it here and there — the NYT story last week about rural counties suffering under O-Care is one, as was that U.S. News story about high-end hospitals being excluded from many plans on the exchanges — but it hasn’t fully detonated yet. That’s because most consumers are still comparison-shopping for plans, which means cost is foremost in their minds right now. Not until next year, after they’ve received their new coverage and begun making doctor appointments, will they start focusing on the shrinking size of their provider networks. It’s one thing to be told that you need to pay a higher premium and deductible because you’re getting more “comprehensive” insurance. It’s another to be told that the “comprehensiveness” you’re paying for includes a less comprehensive network than you used to have under your old, ahem, “cut-rate” plan. That was the whole point of the op-ed by Edie Sundby that everyone’s linking today, in fact. Sundby’s complaint wasn’t that the price of her insurance has skyrocketed, it was that she was essentially being forced to choose between her doctor and her hospital because she couldn’t find a plan in California whose network included both. If you like your doctor, you can’t necessarily keep him/her. [POLITICO]
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