Related: Obamacare Plans Forecast Unhealthy Fall For Democrats
"Health law backers prioritize educating newly insured" by Abby Goodnough | New York Times August 03, 2014
PHILADELPHIA — Advocates of the Affordable Care Act, focused until now on persuading people to buy health insurance, have moved to a crucial new phase: making sure the 8 million Americans who did so understand their often complicated policies and use them properly.
WTF? Why so complicated? All we want is good decent health care and to be taken care of? It's the one thing we wanted from government. Why does it have to be such problem when it is not in the other industrialized nations?
The political stakes are high, as support for the health care law will hinge at least partly on whether people have good experiences with their new coverage.
The first impression lasts, and the experience has not been good. Now add the increasing premiums and the subsidy cuts to the mix and you are going to have an angry electorate in the fall.
What a GREAT OPPORTUNITY for ANOTHER 9/11 FALSE FLAG to DIVERT VOTER ANGER over the failure of Obummercare, 'eh?
Advocates of the law also say teaching the newly insured how to be smart health care consumers could advance the law’s central goal of keeping costs down, such as by discouraging emergency room visits, while still improving care.
Then it has failed because it has NOT kept costs down, and this idea that we are to be "smart health care consumers" instead of patients sickens me.
For those reasons, hospitals, clinics, insurers and health advocacy groups across the country are organizing education efforts, aimed particularly at lower-income people who might not have had insurance.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has jumped in, too, with a project called “From Coverage to Care,” which provides educational materials to community groups and medical providers who are trying to teach health and insurance literacy.
More taxpayer dollars wasted on public relations promotion for a self-inflicted, $elf-created problem rather than on actual care!
“It’s not like you enroll and, voilà, you immediately know how to use it,” said Rebecca Cashman, a program coordinator for Resources for Human Development, a nonprofit that is trying to help Philadelphians understand their new coverage. “There are a lot of people who really have some big questions about ‘what now?’”???
Shouldn't it just BE THERE if you NEED IT?
Last week, Salwa Shabazz arrived at the office of a public health network here with a bag full of paperwork about her new health insurance — and an unhappy look on her face. She had chosen her plan by phone in March, speaking to a customer service representative at the federal insurance marketplace.
I don't know if I want to know.
You know why she had to enroll by phone, right?
Now she had problems and questions, so many questions.
“I’ve had one doctor appointment since I got this insurance, and I had to pay $60,” Shabazz told Daniel Flynn, a counselor with the network, Health Federation of Philadelphia. “I don’t have $60.”
He spent two hours going over her Independence Blue Cross plan, which he explained had a “very complicated” network that grouped doctors and hospitals into three tiers. Shabazz, who has epilepsy, had not understood when she chose the plan that her doctors were in the most expensive tier.
Remember if you like your doctor, like your plan, no one is taking it away, you can keep it? Remember who said that when he was selling this pos?
Hey, what's one more lie in a presidency filled with them?
“None of that was explained when I signed up,” she said. “This is the first I’m hearing it.”
Many people who signed up for private coverage through the new marketplaces had never had health insurance, and even the basics — like what a premium is and why getting a primary care doctor is better than relying on the emergency room — are beyond their experience.
Yeah, it's all kind of YOUR FAULT, patients!
Others have a sense of how insurance works but find the details of the marketplace plans confusing, especially if they signed up without the help of someone who understood them.
Again, WHY the COMPLEXITY?
In one sign of widespread confusion, a recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey of programs that helped people apply for marketplace coverage found that 90 percent had already been re-contacted by consumers with post-enrollment questions.
Make sure you Democrats emphasize Obummercare on the campaign trail now!
Insurers, too, are trying to help ease confusion....
Well, THEY are the ones who WROTE the BILL, so WTF?!!!!!!!!
Why did they make it so confusing, hmmmmmm?
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Also see: Obama Shoots Himself in the Foot
This is all his own fault, the obstinate sphincter.