USA Today: Many People With Obamacare Plans "Can't Find A Doctor Who Will Take Them As Patients"
While the spotlight yesterday was on the still shaky and still unfinished Obamacare exchange websites, today questions resurface about whether people who manage to navigate the red tape of Obamacare can actually get care.
USA Today writes, “Now that many people finally have health insurance through the Affordable Care Act exchanges, some are running into a new problem: They can't find a doctor who will take them as patients.
“Because these exchange plans often have lower reimbursement rates, some doctors are limiting how many new patients they take with these policies, physician groups and other experts say.
“‘The exchanges have become very much like Medicaid,’ says Andrew Kleinman, a plastic surgeon and president of the Medical Society of the State of New York. ‘Physicians who are in solo practices have to be careful to not take too many patients reimbursed at lower rates or they're not going to be in business very long.’ . . . Kleinman says his members complain rates can be 50% lower than commercial plans.”
USA Today spoke to some people struggling to find doctors who will see them despite having insurance through the Obamacare exchanges. “Shawn Smith of Seymour, Ind., spent about five months trying to find a primary care doctor on the network who would take her with a new, subsidized silver-level ACA insurance plan. . . . Jon Fougner, a recent Yale Law School graduate, sued Empire Blue Cross this month because he couldn't find a primary care doctor in his new ACA exchange plan. . . . Among 30 doctors he called, Fougner said, they either weren't taking new patients, weren't in the plan or didn't return calls, or the contact information proved incorrect. ‘It's absolutely their right to take whatever plan they want to take,’ Fougner says of doctors. But he says he found Empire's records are often ‘erroneous about whether the doctor takes the plan and/or other information essential to seeing the doctor.’”
Of course, the story reminds readers of one of the key consequences of the regulations and mandates of Obamacare: “Insurers are also moving to smaller networks of doctors and hospitals in their exchange plans. These ‘narrow networks’ help them reduce costs, but they can also lead to problems when consumers look for doctors who will take them.”
USA Today reports that doctors have their own concerns “about how the whole system is working: If consumers have a federally subsidized plan, they get a 90-day grace period before plans are canceled if they don't pay their premiums. That means doctors have to pursue patients to pay for their services for most of that time as insurance companies refuse to pay the claims.”
Obamacare is still a train wreck and needs to be repealed and replaced with commonsense reforms that will actually lower costs instead of growing government.
Tags: Obamacare plans, can't find a doctor, healthcare plans, repeal and replace, Obamacare, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
USA Today writes, “Now that many people finally have health insurance through the Affordable Care Act exchanges, some are running into a new problem: They can't find a doctor who will take them as patients.
“Because these exchange plans often have lower reimbursement rates, some doctors are limiting how many new patients they take with these policies, physician groups and other experts say.
“‘The exchanges have become very much like Medicaid,’ says Andrew Kleinman, a plastic surgeon and president of the Medical Society of the State of New York. ‘Physicians who are in solo practices have to be careful to not take too many patients reimbursed at lower rates or they're not going to be in business very long.’ . . . Kleinman says his members complain rates can be 50% lower than commercial plans.”
USA Today spoke to some people struggling to find doctors who will see them despite having insurance through the Obamacare exchanges. “Shawn Smith of Seymour, Ind., spent about five months trying to find a primary care doctor on the network who would take her with a new, subsidized silver-level ACA insurance plan. . . . Jon Fougner, a recent Yale Law School graduate, sued Empire Blue Cross this month because he couldn't find a primary care doctor in his new ACA exchange plan. . . . Among 30 doctors he called, Fougner said, they either weren't taking new patients, weren't in the plan or didn't return calls, or the contact information proved incorrect. ‘It's absolutely their right to take whatever plan they want to take,’ Fougner says of doctors. But he says he found Empire's records are often ‘erroneous about whether the doctor takes the plan and/or other information essential to seeing the doctor.’”
Of course, the story reminds readers of one of the key consequences of the regulations and mandates of Obamacare: “Insurers are also moving to smaller networks of doctors and hospitals in their exchange plans. These ‘narrow networks’ help them reduce costs, but they can also lead to problems when consumers look for doctors who will take them.”
USA Today reports that doctors have their own concerns “about how the whole system is working: If consumers have a federally subsidized plan, they get a 90-day grace period before plans are canceled if they don't pay their premiums. That means doctors have to pursue patients to pay for their services for most of that time as insurance companies refuse to pay the claims.”
Obamacare is still a train wreck and needs to be repealed and replaced with commonsense reforms that will actually lower costs instead of growing government.
Tags: Obamacare plans, can't find a doctor, healthcare plans, repeal and replace, Obamacare, To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
2 Comments:
Obama will sign an Executve Order and order doctors to take on patients or lose their license to practice.
Sgt-Major,
You may be right. Dictators like to dictate and Obama seems to be moving in that direction.
Post a Comment
<< Home