Once was a shock. Twice was an outrage. Thrice is really a nightmare that will not end.
Over yesteryear 3 years, my family's private, individual health-insurance plan – a high-deductible Preferred Provider Organization – continues to be canceled three times.
Our first death notice, from Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, arrived in the fall of 2021. Our second, from Rocky Mountain Health Plans, came last August. Three weeks ago, we've got another ominous “notice of plan discontinuation” from Anthem informing us that the insurer “will no more offer your present health plan within the State of Colorado.”
Every time we get a cancellation letter, I recall President Obama's big lie: “If you want your physician, you will be able to maintain your doctor. Period. If you want your wellbeing care plan, you will be able to maintain your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. Regardless of what.”
Then I imagine Vincent Price's evil “Thriller” laugh reverberating at the end of that cruel punchline: Mwahahahahahaha!
(You can play a real-life horror soundtrack by watching Obama speechwriters Jon Lovett, David Litt and Jon Favreau cackle with PBS host Charlie Rose earlier this year about authoring ObamaCare's big lie. Google it, but bring your blood-pressure meds first.)
Like 22 million other Americans, I am a self-employed small-business owner who buys medical health insurance in my family on the person market (instead of group insurance via a company or third party). Our most recent plan features a $6,000 deductible having a $1,000 monthly premium.
It's nosebleed expensive, but provides us use of specialists not curtailed by bureaucratic gatekeepers. This has been essential for us because several people in my loved ones have required specialized care for chronic illnesses. Once more, however, I'll soon be referring to our plan in the past tense.
Choices for families like mine have evaporated within the ObamaCare era. In Colorado, UnitedHealthCare and Humana will cease selling individual plans next year. Rocky Mountain Health Plans is leaving the person market in all but one county.
Nearly 100,000 Coloradans is going to be forced to find new alternatives as open enrollment approaches on Nov. 1, based on the Denver Business Journal. As Anthem abandons PPOs, the price of remaining individual-market plans will soar typically 20 percent.
It's a nationwide implosion. Individual-market customers on Oklahoma's ObamaCare exchange learned a week ago that they may face average rate hikes of a whopping 76 percent. Recently, Maryland approved double-digit rate hikes for all individual market plans.
In August, Tennessee approved rate hikes of 44 to 62 percent for 3 insurers still carrying individual-market plans. In Minnesota, the person market is on the point of collapse; state officials recently OK'd rate hikes averaging 60 % next year – affecting approximately 250,000 people.
The private individual insurance marketplace is at risk. The government-run exchanges are flailing. And the nonprofit ObamaCare co-ops that were designed to dramatically lower costs have bombed despite billions in taxpayer subsidies.
I believe this meltdown – which a lot of us predicted in the get-go – isn't accidentally, but by design. As Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner John Doak put it: “This system has been doomed from the beginning.”
Smug propagandists for ObamaCare, such as liberal magazine Mother Jones, continue to dismiss the plight of countless families like mine and accuse us of concocting a “phony” crisis. But it's the architects of ObamaCare who prevaricated all along.
Remember: ObamaCare godfather and MIT professor Jonathan Gruber bragged that “lack of transparency” was a “huge political advantage,” along with “the stupidity of the American voter.”
This Trojan horse was sold to gullible Americans as a vehicle for expanding “affordable” use of health insurance for those. Now, millions of us are paying the price: crappier plans, fewer choices, shrinking access to specialists, skyrocketing prices – with no end in sight towards the death spiral.
Mission accomplished.
