No wonder Politifact awarded President Barack Obama its 2013 “Lie of the Year” award for his Obamacare promise, “If you like your health plan, you can keep it.” My wife has been trying to do exactly that for three years, and has failed every time. But at least she was able to keep her doctor—until now.
I have previously discussed my wife’s struggles to find and keep coverage in the age of Obamacare. It was never a problem before Obama and Democrats decided the government needed to improve access to coverage.
To recap, prior to the 2014 implementation of the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges, my wife had a Texas Blue Cross policy with a $2,500 deductible. It wasn’t cheap, but it was good coverage and didn’t seem outrageously expensive.
When Texas Blue Cross informed its policyholders they would have to switch to Obamacare-qualified coverage, the company said that the policy held by my wife, and hundreds of thousands of Texans, would no longer be available.
That’s the first time my wife couldn’t keep her policy.
Blue Cross offered her a new policy, but we would have had to pay nearly double the premium to keep essentially the same coverage, so she decided on a $6,000-deductible bronze-level policy—a $3,500 deductible increase—and we still had to pay 50% more for the premium.
Then in the summer of 2015 we received a letter from Blue Cross claiming it had lost $400 million statewide on that policy and so the company was canceling it also, leaving 367,000 Texans looking for yet another policy.
That’s the second time my wife couldn’t keep her policy.
The Blues would offer a different policy, but the network of providers was very thin, and it didn’t include the only doctor she has used for 37 years.
So she decided on a different insurer, one that appeared to have that doctor in its network. The premium was about the same, but the deductible was even higher.
But when she went to schedule a visit, she discovered that her doctor only accepted her insurer’s silver and gold plans, not the bronze plan.
Busted!
Her ONLY option? To pay cash for the exam, which could have run several hundred dollars if any blood work were included.
To summarize: We are paying much more for health insurance than we ever have, and with an almost prohibitively high deductible. And yet the only way my wife can see her doctor, or most other doctors in our area, is to pay for it out pocket, just as if she had no health insurance.
And now we learn that her current insurer is dropping out of Obamacare exchanges.
Strike three on keeping her policy, which means she is probably OUT—perhaps by shifting to one of the Christian sharing plans.
Of course, my wife’s not alone. Similar stories are being told by millions of Americans trying to get coverage in the individual market when it was never a problem before.
Yet even as we struggle, the man who so richly deserved to win the “Lie of the Year” award and his highly paid cohorts continue to deny, deceive and deflect media questions about the Obamacare disaster. To hear them tell it, it’s all good.
Maybe Politifact should consider a “Lie of the Decade” award, since the president is continuing the deception.
Barack Obama lives in the White House and we taxpayers pay for all the health care he and his family needs. When he leaves the White House in January, he and his senior policy advisors will be offered millions of dollars to sit on corporate boards or to peddle their influence. Not one of them will EVER have to worry about affording health care again.
But the rest of us poor saps will have to live with, and pay for, the “Lie of the Year” winner’s health insurance debacle.