CBS News’ Misleading Obamacare Report: Woman’s Plan Paid $50/ Service, Doesn’t Cover Hospitalization
.. this is the kind of plan that GOPer Big Liars (like Rep Marsha Blackburne) have been wailing about (being cancelled because they aren't real insurance policies) in the Obamacare website hearing riot.
THese policies have low premiums but basically, if you get sick you're fucked. Yeah, there are people who are suckered into buying these plans but they end up having their unpaid hospital bills covered by the Government (you and me) and also by everyone who buys real health insurance in higher premiums (hospitals increase their billing rates because Government doesn't pick up all of the uncompensated care losses). GOP doesn't want to talk about whether Obamacare isn't a more efficient way of paying for those who can't afford real insurance - or whether Obamacare already has lowered the cost of real insurance (fostering actual competition and the medical loss ratio, for example) and will lower it more in the future.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/cbs-news-misleading-obamacare-report-womans-plan-paid-50-per-service-doesnt-cover-hospitalization/
[font size="4"...mainstream media has continued to broadcast misleading, deliberately incomplete, and one-sided reports on the effects of the Affordable Care Act on consumers. The latest champion of the form is CBS News’ Jan Crawford, whose report on 56 year-old Dianne Barrette of Florida has become a North Star for those seeking to undercut the health care law by claiming that her premium increased tenfold under Obamacare, without disclosing that what Ms. Barrette was paying $54 a month for barely qualifies as insurance.[/font]
On CBS This Morning, Crawford reported that 56-year-old Dianne Barrette received a letter last month “from Blue Cross Blue Shield, informing her that as of January 2014, she would lose her current plan. She pays $54 a month. The new plan she’s being offered would run $591 a month, ten times more than what she currently pays.”
“What I have right now is what I’m happy with,” Barrette says in the report, “and I just want to know why I can’t keep what I have. Why do I have to be forced into something else.”
There are very good answers to her questions, answers which Crawford, either deliberately or through ignorance, failed to report, answers which are available to anyone with a passing familiarity with health insurance.
First of all, the plan that Barrette paid $54 a month for is barely health insurance at all. It’s part of a subset of insurance that Consumer Reports calls “junk health insurance” (and which even the company that sells it recommends that customers not rely solely upon) and it pays only $50 towards most of the services it covers. That’s it. If Dianne went to the doctor every week for a year, her plan would pay, at most, $2600. Meanwhile, based on average office visit charges, Diane would pay about $5,600.00. She probably doesn’t go to the doctor every week, of course, which means her plan pays a lot less, while her premium buys her a lot less. If she goes to the doctor, say, six times in a year, she’s paid a $648 premium for the privilege of spending another $600 on office visits. The plan also pays up to $15 per prescription, which will get you a few milligrams of most prescription drugs. The one decent deal on her plan is that it covers 100% of in-network lab services.
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