A True Obama Care Story

First off let it be said that my wife and I are self-employed and pay 100% of our health care premiums. Last year we were told by our current insurance company that our rates were increasing by around $150 per person, which would would have made our combined monthly health care costs higher than our mortgage.

When every penny counts we found out that the same company offered slightly better insurance (benefits and deductible wise) in Obama care (covered California) and given the small monthly rebate, we reluctantly got on board. Fast forwarding past all the enrollment BS, we eventually received our new insurance cards and noticed that our current Dr was not listed on it.

 

After many calls to health net, our provider, we finally got through to a human being and were told that our Dr was not participating in covered California (Obama care) so that was why they assigned us a new one. Since it was not all that far from the house we decided to give things a chance and took a drive to meet the newly assigned Dr and check out the facility. When we got there we were simply shocked, the window dressing wasn’t even in my native language, below is a picture of the actual place, honestly we never got out of the car.

 

So we went back on their website and looked to see what our Dr options were. We reside in one of the largest cities in Southern California and there was exactly 10 doctors in my area that practiced at our local hospital. 4 were pediatricians, 2 were not taking new patients and I couldn’t pronounce the names of the others except for the last Dr on the list.

 

We went to meet the prospective new Dr we had signed up for online. When we walked in he had a sign above his ft. desk that said “restore the constitution” and I instantly knew he was the Dr for me. So in a insurance world that runs on referrals, I made my first appointment to get a referral to have my pacemaker service performed. They basically read the activity logs, check battery life and make calibration adjustments if needed

 

I said to the Dr “you know there are zero heart doctors in this plan” he said “yes, it will be interesting to see who picks this up”. Well it’s been 2 weeks now and I haven’t heard a thing. If this was a life threatening topic I would certainly go to the emergency room or go to a cardiologist and pay for it, but I think I will wait a little longer to see how all of this is going to pan out.

 

Personally I don't think this program will be sustainable and we will be forced to change insurance providers again. And you can be assured that when Obama care fails the insurance companies are not going to roll back the premiums to pre-Obama care rate hikes.