New Reasons to Hate Obamacare

Ok, so I read somewhere that the reason why there has to be a hefty co-pay of 20% or more for services is because apparently, some of us who pay for our own insurance or have no insurance or are poor have NO idea what medical care actually costs.  I’m not sure how the plan administrators determined this.  Did they send out a survey?  I didn’t get one.  And since I’ve actually, you know, been paying for my COBRA and self-insurance for 2 years now, I think I have a pretty good idea of how expensive just the premiums are.  The premiums alone make me not want to incur any additional costs.

But I digress.  Because, the fact is that with Obamacare, we’re going to be locked into a geographical area with a narrow network of doctors and hospitals and it doesn’t really matter if we are aware of how much things costs.  Whatever that network says our costs of care are going to be is what they’re going to be.  We, the ungrateful recipients of Obamacare, will not have an opportunity to shop around like some people with employer sponsored health care.  We will be locked into whatever they determine the price is going to be.  In fact, unless HHS isn’t watching these plan administrators like a hawk, it just might turn out that the exchange plans are the most expensive plans available.  You’re locked into a plan network, it controls the fees and there’s no shopping around.  All that’s left is the creepy voice saying, “Where else are you going to go, sucker?”

So, it looks like we will be lectured to about the cost of the services, and by the way, if you need to use your insurance, it’s generally not the best time to become a comparative shopper.  But we will also be lectured to for not being able to reduce our 20-40% copay.  Indeed, there is this implicit assumption that if we weren’t so careless or stupid, we wouldn’t be in this fix where we need to be lectured.

So, yeah, more loathing.

I’m getting the sense that when the Democrats passed this bill they didn’t expect that there would still be ongoing layoffs and long term unemployment among older, middle class, well educated people.

Well, there is and we’re not amused.  Can we dispense with the faux moralism of this teachable moment about costs and admit up front that the hefty co-pays are another way for insurance companies to extract more money from us while locking us into a situation we can do nothing about?  You can stop talking down to us now.