ObamaCare & the Healthcare Marketplace, Why Any Reasonable Doctor Will Not Take Your Insurance
As countless patients in my practice have found, purchasing Healthcare Exchange Insurance has many pitfalls. After signing up, most patients discover they no longer can either see the physicians they have trusted for years, cannot go to a hospital anywhere near their home to have a baby or have to drive 60 minutes to see the one specialist in network. For hospitals, usually less desirable ones, administration is accepting contracts at cut rates to attract business and like many things in life; you get what you pay for. Just ask my local teachers who are on their new improved health plan this year.
So why do physicians not want to see Marketplace insurance patients? Ask yourself this, would you want to work free? I did not get into medicine to get rich, g-d knows I am smart enough to have chosen 10 other professions that are less stressful, allow me to spend more time with my awesome family, provide a better income and are significantly less stressful. Nevertheless, my weakness is I truly love helping other people.
Some geniuses in the government put a small but very damaging clause in the Healthcare Marketplace insurance plans that states, ‘if you sign up for a plan and make the first payment your plan may not be terminated until you miss at least 3 months of payments. As an OB, I take care of each women for 9 months and deliver their baby, after which I can bill your insurance. If someone delivers a baby and they have not paid their premium in the last 3 months, the insurance company is responsible for eating the cost of care for the 1st month. For the last two months, your physician will be required to payback any and all money that received from the insurance company. Often a
physician will not the ‘good news’ for six months to year after someone delivered, it is the government we are talking about. They are not exactly the model of efficiency. Then we are supposed to try to get the money from someone who likely lost his or her job, moved to a different state or just figured out how to work the system to get the highest quality health care at no cost. Do you think the government could step in to reimburse the physician? They did come up with the master plan.
Most importantly, I want every woman I see to be able to have access to the same high quality physicians I would send my wife and children to. Like any profession, there are people that are terrible at their job, just plan mediocre and then awesome. Who deserves anything less than awesome?
So What Can You Do To Ensure You Receive the Best Quality Care?
You do not need to go through the Healthcare Marketplace to get a good plan and meet the government’s requirements to avoid being penalized on your tax return. Remember, the plans offered all come from private insurance carriers. If you go directly to the insurance carriers through a website such as www.ehealthinsurance.com which offers multiple companies and products you can find out if your doctors and hospitals are in their network, while avoiding the government completely.
Be a smart consumer now, so you will not be regretting your decision later.