Obama Care is insurance however it is not coverage!!

 Obama Care is insurance however it is not                     coverage!!

My premiums are higher, it inherently has a higher deductible, and my coinsurance is greater. The hard line is I will pay greater than 9,000.00 this year before the insurance co. pays ONE cent. 

When I was forced to shop for a new plan I found myself speaking to someone reading off a script in the Philippines.  Do ya think that grated a nerve?  At this point, we don’t have a good definition of “affordable” — or how to measure it fully and fairly. Many studies show that national health costs, while still rising, are not growing as fast as they once were. But what does that mean for individual patients? 

The Affordable Care Act has ushered in an era of complex new health insurance products featuring legions of out-of-pocket coinsurance fees, high deductibles and narrow provider networks. Though commercial insurers had already begun to shift toward such policies, the health care law gave them added legitimacy and has vastly accelerated the trend, experts say.

The theory behind the policies is that patients should bear more financial risk so they will be more conscious and cautious about health care spending. But some experts say the new policies have also left many Americans scrambling to track expenses from a multitude of sources — such as separate deductibles for network and non-network care, or payments for drugs on an insurer’s ever-changing list of drugs that require high co-pays or are not covered at all.

Obama care policies necessitate footing bills privately. For others, the constant changes in policy guidelines — annual shifts in what’s covered and what’s not, monthly shifts in which doctors are in and out of network — can produce surprise bills for services they assumed would be covered. For still others, the new fees are so confusing and unsupportable that they just avoid seeing doctors.

It is true that the Affordable Care Act has erased some of the more egregious practices of the American health insurance system that left patients bankrupt or losing homes to pay bills. Insurers can no longer deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions, for example. And the new policies cap out-of-pocket spending so long as the patient receives care within the plan. Most important, the act has offered health insurance to an estimated 10 million Americans who did not have any, often by expanding Medicaid or providing subsidies.

So for now we all will feel as if we are paying til’ it HURTS!

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