March, 2014 The Unfolding Disaster That Is Obama Crae, Part 7: Losing Access To The Best Hospitals, Prostate Cancer For Women, Is Harry Reid Now Lying?

This is our seventh and hopefully last, update this month regarding the unfolding disaster that is Obama Care. It is not that we have covered all of the latest disasters, we are just getting too depressed talking about how this piece of horrid legislation is affecting the financial and economic health, along with the freedom, of just about every American. Even if we finish up today, you can be sure that this time next month we will be going through a new round of fiascos and insanity being spawned from Obama Care.

1) A March 18, 2014 Associated Press article had some very depressing news for current and potential cancer patients who have enrolled in Obama Care health insurance policies:

• Some Obama Care insurance policy holders may not be able to access to some of the nation’s top cancer hospitals since those facilities are not on their insurer’s approved list of options, according to a survey of nineteen cancer centers throughout the country.
• For example, Seattle Cancer Care Alliance is not included by five out of eight insurers in Washington state's insurance exchange. 
• The MD Anderson Cancer Center says it is included in less than half of the Obama Care plans in the Houston area.
• World famous Memorial Sloan-Kettering is included in just two of nine Obama Care insurers in New York City.
• Only four of 19 of the cancer centers that responded to the AP survey claim patients have access through all the Obama Care insurance companies in their state exchanges.
• The article points out that up until recently, all insurance companies would have wanted to give their customers access to the best cancer hospitals in their states but now, Obama Care has shifted the focus from medical care to cost containment and many of these best cancer centers are more expensive.
• "This is a marked deterioration of access to the premier cancer centers for people who are signing up for these plans," said Dan Mendelson, CEO of the market research firm Avalere Health, since the focus is on costs.
• Distressing for cancer patients is that many of these patients may not be able get access to the most advanced treatment, including clinical trials of new medications.
• Adding insult to injury, according to the article, it is not easy for consumers shopping online in the Obama Care new insurance markets to tell whether the best cancer medical institutions are included in an Obama Care insurance plan.
• To really add insult to injury, the article also points out that the government-subsidized private plans on the exchanges typically offer less choice than Medicare or employer plans.

Thus, there is some good news about cancer from Obama Care. Previously, a cancer diagnosis could make a person uninsurable. Now, insurers can't turn away sick people with health problems or charge them more. Lifetime dollar limits on insurance policies, once a death sentence, especially for cancer patients, are also banned.

But, as we have pointed out previously in our Obama Care reviews, the good news is that you have health care insurance, the bad news is that you cannot health care treatment. By never resolving and attacking the root causes of our escalating health care costs, the Obama Care legislation allowed the accounting industry to take over the health care industry. And costs and profits now drive the health care process rather than doctors and patients driving the health care process. 

To keep insurance premiums low, insurers have designed narrow, and less expensive, networks of hospitals and doctors. And as a result, the same design process has also narrowed the range and depth of potential treatment scenarios for cancer patients. By not including a top cancer center an insurer can cut costs even if it sub optimizes treatment.

The AP article also points out a more insidious insurance company aim. By excluding the top cancer treatment options out of its hospital list, the insurance company may also protect itself from risk, slyly implying to cancer survivors or people with a strong family history of the disease that they should look elsewhere for the best treatment, minimizing the insurance company’s list of high potential and high cost cancer patients.

This is what happens when you to not fix the real cause of a problem, in any walk of life. The problem persists and you have to look for other ways, other short cuts to minimize the ongoing issues with the true root causes. And that is all Obama Care is, a Rube Goldberg short cut process that resolves nothing, it just moves around the risk and costs without reducing either.

2) It is often very scary when politicians speak and you realize that great swaths of your life and well being are dependent on them being intelligent, informed, and not ignorant of the issues. Unfortunately, as it often happens, this was not the case relative to a North Carolina state government politician, Verla Insko. In public and during a televised hearing of a state Senate proceeding regarding Obama Care, Ms. Insko proved to be possessing none of these attributes.

During the state Senate legislative hearings on Obama Care, she asked about the percentage of prostate cancer patients that were women: "What percent of the prostate cancer patients are women?" She asked this question of Duke University research scholar Chris Conover during the hearing in Raleigh.

"I have no idea," Conover replied, as people in the room began laughing.

"I would guess zero," he added. "But I don't know that for sure."

Ms. Insko, probably decision maker on health care matters in the state of North Carolina, did not now that prostate cancer is strictly a male problem. And she is in a position of power to decide the health care needs of residents in that state. Insane.

3) We have asserted any number of times in this blog that Obama Care and its ineptness could end up killing Americans who otherwise would have had longer lives in the absence of Obama Care. A recent investigative article from the Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper was summarized in a March 18, 2014 on the Bankrupting America website:

• Larry Basich said he began trying to enroll into an Obama Care health insurance policy in Nevada on Oct. 1, 2013, the day the exchange website went live. 
• Like most Americans trying to use the Obama Care health exchange websites, he had to overcome technical flaws during multiple sign-up attempts. 
• Finally, in mid-November, six weeks or so after he started the sing up process, he finally got through the morass and chose his plan: UnitedHealthcare’s MyHPNSilver1.
• His description of the process: “It was like reaching the third level of Doom.” 
• Basich paid his first premium on Nov. 21, 2013 and within days, the Obama Care health exchange withdrew the $160.77 monthly premium payment from his money-market savings account. 
• According to the Journal-Review, because Basich paid a month before the Dec. 23 deadline, his Obama Care insurance coverage was to commence on Jan. 1, 2014.
• However, as the weeks ticked by in late 2013, Basich received nothing to confirm he actually had health insurance except for the fact that someone had taken his money.
• Nevada Health Link, the state Obama Care exchange, kept telling him he was enrolled, but UnitedHealthcare said he wasn’t in their system and thus, they were not covering him.
• Unfortunately, Basich’s predicament went critical on Dec. 31, when he had a heart attack.
• His post heart attack treatment, which included a triple bypass on January 3, 2014 resulted in $407,000 in medical bills in January and February that no insurer is covering and for which he is constantly getting sent bills to pay.
• In the meantime, the Obama Care exchange has billed and collected premium payments from his account for the months of January and February even though the insurance company still says he is not covered.
• This whole mess has resulted in everybody getting involved, from the insurance company to the people operating the health exchange to his insurance agent to representatives from Nevada Senator Harry Reid’s office, with nothing being resolved. [Note: this is the same Harry Reid who in late Febraury claimed that ALL Obama Care horror stories were untrue. I think this qualifies as a horror story in the Senator’s home state.]
• The only thing Baisch knows is that everyone agrees that his Obama Care health insurance coverage will begin in April, almost four months after he started making Obama Care payments, and which he continued to make, for insurance he expected to have started nearly three months ago, coverage that was promised to him by the exchange.

What a mess and stress to put on an American who is trying to remain stress free and recover from a serious heart problem. But apparently he is not the only American or Nevadan suffering through similar trials and tribulations. 

The Bankrupting America website piece, which excerpted information from the newspaper article, refers to a Ms. Burch who apparently owns or works for an insurance brokerage firm called Branch Benefits Consultants. She asserts that Mr. Basich is not unique:

• Burch estimates that of nearly 200 Branch Benefits Consultants client sign ups via Nevada Health Link for Obama Care polices, only 5% have gone through problem-free.
• More than 20 of her customers experienced the same plan-selection issue as Basich. 
• One client chose an effective coverage date of March 1. Her insurance card showed an effective date of Jan. 1. Burch said that when she called to fix the issue, a customer-service rep told her the system showed a start date of April 1.
• With the March 31 enrollment deadline looming, Burch states that she still sees other widespread enrollment problems, including frequent website error messages, incorrect Federal government subsidy calculations, payments missing within the Obama Care data systems despite clients’ canceled checks, and incorrect effective coverage dates. 

What a mess and an unfolding disaster for every American. We are going to cap this month’s string of disaster reviews at seven days. However, rest assured, at this time next month there will be another string of disasters from the worst piece of Washington legislation ever written.

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