Clinging to Garbage Health Insurance Policies
The funny thing about this health-care reform is for the last 3-4 years, we’ve lurched from one pseudo-disaster to another. Just think about it. We’ve gone through the socialized medicine craze – “this is nothing but socialized medicine, do you want to be Canada or France?” We have gone through the “President Obama is thwarting the will of the people” phase. Last week, we decided to enter the “Obama lied to the American people” phase. President Obama did say on multiple occasions, that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” That was simply not true. It was never true. What the president should have said was that if you have decent health insurance and you like it, then you can keep it. If you have crap, I’m sorry, but that’s not going to be acceptable anymore. Unfortunately, qualified statements simply don’t play as well with the American people as these definitive clichés.
Many Americans are finding out that they simply cannot keep their health insurance. I remember reading somewhere that this woman was very upset that she was going to lose her health insurance which cost her approximate $650 a year. Unfortunately, upon examination, she really didn’t get covered for anything. She was playing $650 to get nothing. (Like many Americans she said that she liked her policy, but she had never used it and didn’t know that it covered nothing.) This is the crux of the problem. Many insurance companies were selling health insurance at some nominal price that really didn’t cover almost anything. I saw the other side of this coin on multiple occasions. I have had patients in the hospital who sustained significant injuries only to find out that their insurance would not pay for rehabilitation, cognitive therapy, physical therapy, almost anything that they really needed. I’ve seen patients and their spouses on the phone desperate to talk to anyone who had answers, only to find out they’re going to get the runaround, again. (more…)
