Obamacare: Want to keep your doctor? Pay a premium
One of Barack Obama’s promises during the healthcare reform debate was that if you liked your doctor or your insurance plan you would be able to keep your doctor and your plan. While that is still technically true there is one problem; you might not be able to afford to keep your doctor, and your employer might not be able to afford to keep your plan.
In an effort to keep down the costs of providing healthcare to their employees many small companies, and large ones as well, are beginning to look at less expensive plans. These plans include plans which limit a person’s choice of doctors. If your doctor is not on the list of accepted doctors under the new plan you are out of luck. These plans do offer you a chance to keep your doctor if he or she is not on their plan– you will just have to pay a premium. If you cannot afford to pay a premium for the privilege (as the article I linked to calls it) of keeping your own doctor, you will be forced to get a doctor who is on the new healthcare plan that you will also now have to purchase. So much for keeping your doctor or your plan.
Two of the stated goals of the healthcare reform law were to bring down the cost of healthcare, and to make affordable healthcare available (and required) to all Americans. How is Obamacare going to achieve these goals? The answer is simple: by lowering the quality of the healthcare plans that most people and businesses can afford to purchase. Lower quality healthcare plans with lesser coverage and benefits means a lower price. Instead of bringing higher quality healthcare to Americans, Obamacare is going to bring lesser quality healthcare to all Americans under the guise of this somehow being fair. Many Americans are going to be losing the quality of their healthcare benefits while being forced into inferior plans.
You simply cannot add 30 million people to the healthcare rolls and bring down the costs unless you lessen the benefits that healthcare providers will be covering; in other words, bringing down the quality of healthcare that many Americans enjoy. Even then it is still questionable as to whether the costs of healthcare will be reduced.
This is what many of us were trying to warn the American people about, and this is what many of the American people finally realized too late. Once the American people realized what was in the healthcare bill the momentum gathered by the Obama regime and Democrats in congress was to strong to stop it. They were hell bent on passing this disaster at all costs, regardless of what the American people wanted and now we are all going to pay the price…..LITTERALLY!
Trackbacks
- Obamacare: Some insurers begin to drop coverage of children « America's Watchtower
- Obamacare: Some insurers begin to drop coverage of children « America’s Watchtower « Interned In Northfield
- Obamacare: Zeke Emanuel admits that if you like your doctor you may have to pay more to keep your doctor | America's Watchtower
America's Watchtower 
As described, this is something private insurers are doing and has nothing to do with Obama or the healthcare law. Insurers are reducing how much they pay and some doctors are dropping out of the network, leaving those who will take less.
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Earthman is right – insurers are offering less costly plans that include less flexibility in the area of doctor and facility choice.
It’s more accurate to say that these newer plans can save you money if you’re willing to consider seeing a different doctor, or you can continue paying your current premiums, plus the annual 15% or so increase, to maintain your healthcare status quo.
I sold Medicare Supplement insurance for a while, and I can attest that cost is very important to people, and many of my clients expressed a willingness to drop their current doctor in a heartbeat if it meant significant savings in their premiums.
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I think what you and Earthman are missing is the fact that Obama promised that this legislation would bring down the cost of healthcare, yet it is still rising. If by bringing down the cost of healthcare he meant that people could chose a plan that wasn’t as good as the one they already had, that is no reform because that was always an option.
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Why the h*ll do I have to consider seeing another doctor if my doctor does a great job?! This is America gosh darn it! I have the freedom and the liberty to CHOOSE who I see. and … get this. I PAY for it!
You and Earthman canNOT be this ignorant. You just can’t. One day … mark my words … your ignorance or refusal to see what if right in front of you is going to come back and bite you in the behind.
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Because Barack Obama knows what is best for you! 🙂
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For the same reason you’d have to go through the same decision-making process if your employer changed plans on you and your doctor didn’t participate in the new plan.
This plan wasn’t devised by the President, by the way – a number of insurance companies simply came out with low-cost, low-option plans that included restrictions on doctor choice.
If you’re caught up in this, and your doctor’s on the list, then you’ve got nothing to worry about, eh?
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Steve, I really doubt the President meant that healthcare costs would start going down overnight, although it doesn’t surprise me that his detractors interpreted it that way. And the plans you’re referring to have just been unveiled, so it’s kind of disingenuous to suggest that they’ve always been an option.
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These particular plans may not have always been an option, but every year as healthcare costs rise, my company changes insurance policies and gives us the option between a couple of plans that we feel would be better for us. Every year these plans and cover less and that is how we end up saving money on healthcare, that is what I was referring to.
I understand that healthcare costs were not going to begin to drop right away, but I remember the day after the bill was signed into law and Barack Obama flew passed the flood damaged state of Massachusetts without acknowledging it and proclaimed it to be a beautiful day with the sun shining in spite of what the detracters of healthcare claimed. He made it sound as if we expected the earth to cave in right away when we all were afraid of what was going to come down the road eventually. We are beginning to see the results now and the day doesn’t look as sunny any more.
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