By Bob Friedrich
The U.S. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, as some refer to it, has not lived up to the promise made by elected officials to millions of middle-class workers and families.
Many of these middle-class folks, including myself, were promised a rose garden but have received only thorns. It is distressing to find that if I liked my doctor, I cannot keep my doctor and if I liked my old plan I cannot keep my old plan.
Like millions of Americans, I received a termination notice from my insurer advising me that my carefully selected health insurance policy has been rendered “noncompliant” by the ACA and is terminated. As a self-employed individual, I heeded the advice of President Barack Obama and sought out a healthcare policy for my family, and I thought that would work as well as my old policy.
What a journey it has been.
Like myself, millions of other self-employed individuals have been forced into the healthcare exchanges, as they are called, with the promise of lower costs and better coverage. In reality, just the opposite has happened, especially if your annual income exceeds $46,000.
That is the income level at which premium-lowering subsidies are no longer available. Without those subsidies, health insurance costs soar. The middle-class working stiffs are the real losers here, as they experience crushing increases in their health insurance premiums.
If my previous and affordable “Chevy” policy served me well for years, why am I now being forced to purchase a “Mercedes” policy with all kinds of bells and whistles that at my age I do not need? Sure my “Chevy” policy did not have child dental care, maternity benefits or access to “free” birth control, all requirements of ACA policies.
But my old policy allowed me to keep my doctors and access to all hospitals. Given the choice, I suspect most would choose a plan with the doctors they have trusted for years, a choice of hospitals and affordable deductibles.
If you receive your health insurance through work, you have probably escaped the turmoil of this law, but your day of reckoning is coming soon as the implementation delays of the law expire and the employer mandate kicks in.
Employers will find the cost of employee health coverage so expensive that the only affordable alternative will be to move their employees onto the healthcare exchanges. That is when the rest of the middle-class families will experience the Obama-shock that self-employed individuals are now confronting.
If you are lucky enough to find a healthcare exchange policy that you like with a doctor you are happy with, you are still not out of the woods. I was shocked to learn that many of New York’s finest hospitals, such as Memorial Sloan Kettering, Weill Cornell and others, have opted out of most if not all of the healthcare exchange plans.
How disturbing is it that at the most vulnerable moment of your life your hospital of choice does not accept your insurance. This scary scenario is not imaginary and the ramifications are even more frightening. Losing access to top-quality hospitals means more patients will be pushed into fewer and less-desirable hospitals, at a time when specialized care is needed most.
The glaring failure of Obamacare is in its one-size-fits-all approach to healthcare, a system imposed upon us by Washington bureaucrats who in their hubris have exempted themselves from the provisions of the Affordable Care Act.
Bob Friedrich is a civic leader and president of Glen Oaks Village.
