By Peter Galuszka
You can almost hear the telexes chattering in the predawn hours sending out coded instructions to eager conservative bloggers. It’s a “red state” alert! Plan “R” for “Roger!” Just like Major General Jack D. Ripper. It’s the go code for attacking Obamacare!
So, you have them excitedly dusting off their purple prose. “The worst law since 1789,” or somesuch. They all come from the point that everything was fine until liberal Obama ruined it. He’s a liar. Nobody is signing up. He promised you could keep your plan.
Well, I found it interesting when I was reading Matthew Yglesias over at Slate.com when he pointed out some interesting points about “keeping” your old plans. Of course, the point may be moot since Obama has bended. But here’s Yglesias’s argument and it’s a good one.
He takes us to the golden years of 2008 “long before Kathleen Sebelius and her jack-booted thugs were stomping on the American health insurance market.” Back then most people had insurance plans and many were happy with them. What seems to be forgotten is that “most of them had no guarantee whatsoever that they would be able to keep their plans next year.”
Every year, co-pays might go up. Companies would pay more. Individuals would have to pay higher deductibles. It was like the constant shifting of sand on a beach.
Yglesias says the ACA does not prevent insurance companies from dropping plans they offer. If they had to keep offering the same plans, they’d lose leverage in dealing with health care providers. Hospitals might demand outrageous fees and the insurer couldn’t say no.
What’s been happening is that Obamacare encourages the termination of a certain type of insurance plan involving a legal term called “rescission.” This applies specifically to “pre-existing conditions.” Let’s say Joe Blow is happy with his plan. He doesn’t pay much because he’s healthy. Then he finds out he has cancer or some other serious illness. In many cases, insurers either would claim they were deceived about the “pre-existing condition” and not pay his claims or they would use it as an excuse to cancel the policy the first chance they got.
Why? “An insurance company has no desire to actually foot the bill for a seriously ill person’s medical treatment,” Yglesias writes.
When I had a problem when I was rejected a few years ago from getting an individual plan because of a “pre-existing” condition (now well under control), I consulted a doctor friend of mine. He said: “Are you nuts? Why the hell would they want you for a client? You’re almost 60. Within a few years you might actually cost them some money.”
So, what we’re seeing is a lot of whining and miscommunication over a certain type of plan that is a sort of extended scam. It should be ended anyway. You pay little because you are healthy. The companies might nice profits. You live comforted knowing that if you suddenly have to go to the hospital for something like a bike wreck you’ll be OK financially.
Just don’t dare get sick with something serious.
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