The impact of ObamaCare on doctors and patients, companies inside and outside the health sector, and American workers and taxpayers
Dr. Christina Bovelsky runs Peachtree Family Medicine in Middletown Delaware, and offers a unique approach to medicine. Rather than dealing with traditional insurance, co-pays and deductibles, Dr. Bovelsky’s patients pay a one-year membership fee. This fee includes between two and four office visits, an annual physical exam, and small procedures like electrocardiograms and strep tests.
Add 250 New York cancer patients to the long list of victims of ObamaCare’s lies — just one more snapshot of the program’s ongoing death spiral.
These New Yokers are getting treatment at world-renowned Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center — but their ObamaCare policies are about to vanish, as Health Republic, one of the largest health insurers on New York state’s exchange, and the only one to cover Sloan-Kettering treatment, is shutting down at month’s end after losing $130 million.
A local family that bought what they thought was a premium plan discovered they were going to have to pay thousands of dollars per year out of pocket for what other insurance plans would have covered.
In most states, consumers with HIV or AIDS who buy silver-level plans on the insurance marketplaces find limited coverage of common drug regimens they may need and high out-of-pocket costs, according to a new analysis.
Vermont’s top financial regulator has no regrets about being the nation’s only state insurance commissioner to refuse to license an Obamacare co-operative. Susan L. Donegan was commissioner for Vermont’s Division of Insurance in 2013 when she refused to issue a license to the proposed Vermont Health CO-OP, saying it failed to meet state standards. Her action barred the Obamacare non-profit from selling health insurance in the state.
In late September, the handful of CEOs leading Affordable Care Act-funded consumer operated and oriented plans traveled to Denver in search of answers. The past year had been a difficult one. Their companies were struggling, awash in red ink and facing a mounting list of operational challenges. A few co-ops had already shut down, and regulators were circling several more. The fledgling health insurers needed more support from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services if they were going to survive. Most importantly, they needed a lot more money.
The Senate is going to have to re-write portions of the House-passed reconciliation bill after the parliamentarian said the legislation violated Senate rules. Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough ruled Tuesday afternoon that sections repealing the ACA’s individual and employer mandates would not meet the Senate’s criteria for the expedited process, called reconciliation.
Until Carly Fiorina criticized Obamacare during Tuesday’s prime-time Republican debate, there hadn’t been much attention to health care in the GOP debates. During last week’s Democratic candidate forum in South Carolina, I didn’t detect a single question about health care or the Affordable Care Act. This is not a knock on hosts and moderators; debates and forums such as the Democratic meeting last week are not the best vehicles for drawing out presidential candidates on the intricacies of health policy. The result, however, is that the public is not learning much from these widely viewed events about what candidates would do regarding one of the country’s most divisive issues should he or she be elected president.
As gridlock persists in our nation’s capital and good legislation continues to die in the Senate, it is clear the next president will play a key role in determining the future of Obamacare. That means candidates’ positions on the issue will be among the most important when ballots are cast next year.
A total of $1.23 billion in federal taxpayer dollars has now been sunk in 12 of 23 co-ops created under Obamacare that have gone out of business, representing another Obamacare failure, lawmakers say. Co-ops in Arizona and Michigan went out of business last week, adding themselves to the 10 that have already failed in Utah, Kentucky, New York, Nevada, Louisiana, Oregon, Colorado, Tennessee, South Carolina, and a co-op that served both Iowa and Nebraska.