Obamacare hurts critical care patients, Existing coverage ends without Affordable Care Act signup, Cancer heart kidney patients lose coverage doctors, Obamacare higher premiums and deductibles
“If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan.”…Barack Obama
“millions of Americans are getting or are about to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare, say experts, and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years.”…NBC News October 29, 2013
“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”…George Orwell, “1984″
From the Winston Salem Journal November 6, 2013.
“Health law clock is ticking for sickest patients”
“With federal and state online health care marketplaces experiencing glitches a month into implementation, concern is mounting for a vulnerable group of people who were supposed to be among the health law’s earliest beneficiaries.
Hundreds of thousands of people across the country with pre-existing chronic conditions such as cancer, heart failure or kidney disease who are covered through high risk-insurance pools will see their coverage dissolve by year’s end.
They are supposed to gain regular coverage under the Affordable Care Act, which requires insurers to cover those with severe medical problems. But many of them have had trouble signing up for health insurance through the exchanges and could find themselves without coverage in January if they don’t meet a Dec. 15 deadline to enroll.
Administration officials say the federal exchange, which covers more than half the states, won’t be working probably until the end of November, leaving people just two weeks to sign up if they want coverage by Jan. 1.
“These individuals can’t be without coverage for even a month,” said Tanya Case, the chairwoman of the National Association of State Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans, which represents the nation’s high-risk pools. “It’s a matter of life or death.””
““I’m scared. I’m in the middle of my cancer treatment, and if my insurance ends, I’m going to have to cancel the rest of my treatment,” said Kelly Bachi, an Oklahoma boat repair business owner who has breast cancer and is covered through a pool.
Cancer treatment without insurance would cost her about $500,000, she said.
Bachi has not been able to enroll via the healthcare.gov federal website, although not for lack of trying. She attempted to sign up half a dozen times, was eventually able to create an account, but was later blocked from accessing the account.
Others — including Jill Morin of Raleigh, N.C., who has a severe heart condition and is covered by her state’s pool — have not attempted to enroll.
“It’s the unknown, the uncertainty that gets to me,” Morin, 42, said. “I don’t know what my cost will be at the end of the day. I don’t know if my two cardiologists and my procedures are going to be covered under the plan. There just isn’t enough information on that website.”
But, she said, she has no choice. She must pick a plan soon because she can’t afford to go without. She plans to go to an insurance broker for advice, then contact the federal call center to bypass the online marketplace altogether.”
Read more:
http://www.journalnow.com/news/nation_world/article_a1b32440-474c-11e3-96ff-001a4bcf6878.html
From Citizen Wells November 5, 2013.
“A San Diego woman says she has been kicked off her insurance plan due to Obamacare while battling Stage 4 gallbladder cancer.
“I had great cancer doctors and health insurance,” Edie Littlefield Sundby wrote in a Sunday Wall Street Journal op-ed. “My plan was canceled. Now I worry how long I’ll live.”
“For almost seven years I have fought and survived Stage 4 gallbladder cancer, with a five-year survival rate of less than 2 percent after diagnosis,” she said.
Her op-ed, which received significant attention from conservatives online, comes as millions of Americans are being dropped from their health insurance plans because of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s signature health care law.
Sundby will be released from her current plan effective Dec. 31. She said her only options going forward are to either enroll in Obamacare and lose her cancer doctors, or to start her treatment all over again with a new provider at rates that are approximately 40 to 50 percent more expensive.
Worse than just losing her doctors through Obamacare, Sundby said, is that nothing available through the government-run program comes even close to comparing with what she had through her private insurer.”
Citizen WElls 