(Community Matters) The rollout of the federal website is indictable; best practices, even standard practices were ignored. As to health insurance going forward, my personal experience is a 43% reduction in EF’s health care insurance premiums quoted just last week.
re: the website rollout: 2 things. 1) once we’re up and running, heads should roll. Someone didn’t do their job and should lose it. This certainly isn’t the damn secretary of HHS. Does anyone really expect the head of a federal agency employing more than 65,000 people, running more than 300 programs and with a budget greater than $700 billion to have personal oversight of the rollout? Now, if it doesn’t get fixed expeditiously and if we don’t find out who screwed up, that’s a different matter. 2) let’s not forget that the site that isn’t working is the site having to be created to back fill for those states obstructing the expansion of health care coverage to Americans. I’m hearing, other states’ site are working just fine. Relevance? Pretty hypocritical to hear the same lawmakers supporting and/or taking every step to obstruct implementation of healthcare reform scream about its obstruction and delayed implementation.
Discontinuation of plans & rising costs – so, does no one else suspect health care insurance companies are gaming the system and doing their best to make HCR look bad? . . . screwing with their clients? Seriously, have you dealt w/ a health insurance company lately? Do we recall they hired Dick Armey to start the Tea Party (or at least to fan the flames). They screw clients regularly. I just completed nearly six months of appeals to obtain approval for a medical procedure – droppy eye lid, I know, sounds lame. But, even though the evidence of how it’s impacting my eyesight is medically incontestable, they originally denied 2 of 3 necessary procedures. Upon the physician’s appeal (which I had to push & insist), they only approved the second. This exhausted the physician’s options but I appealed to the state board and they quickly and very emphatically ruled that there was not even a question and instructed the insurance company to cover all three procedures. Several years ago, I had to call and PR threaten the president of United Healthcare in Texas from MD Anderson while a friend was literally being infused with chemo in order to obtain anti naseau medication. Finally, years before that, my carrier denied what I thought was routine blood work. Their answer to my appeal was they’d flag my account so I wouldn’t have further trouble, but they intended to continue denying this routine coverage to other insureds at our company (took a threat to change carriers to fix). So, my experience is yes, they routinely screw over clients. Do I think they might be canceling plans to further arm HCR opponents, even at the expense of integrity and client service? You bet.
Eric Holder and his regional US Attorneys should be conducting investigations . . . right after we fix the damn website.
And, as I mentioned in an earlier blog post, I also think we’re comparing apples to passion fruit and might be seeing a not-unwise incentive toward plans with some shared accountability for costs. All sides of this debate should be supporting some heightened accountability of medical costs incurment (as well as oversight of efficacy for that matter) if we’re to have any chance of fixing the world’s most costly healthcare system delivering below average results for most consumers.
Community Matters 