The first year of Obamacare, I went to great pains to choose an insurance company my doctor took, only to have him tell me in 2014 that he didn’t take it. Last year, I once again went to great pains to choose an insurance company my doctor took, only to be told when the year began that he did not take it. I had to have my insurance broker — whose services I engaged the second time around — tell them that, yes, indeed, they had signed a contract to take my insurance. When I finally saw my doctor after over a year without insurance he took, I overheard him say to one of his associates “he has some Obamacare thing.” That “Obamacare thing” was a company I had never heard of — Meritus — which is now bankrupt.
So now I have to switch health insurance plans yet again, and neither one of the two doctors I listed in my HealthCare.gov application takes a single one of the 69 plans available to me— from bronze to platinum. One of them, a specialist, told me on the phone that they are still working out contracts. Really?? Seriously?? You’ve got to be kidding me. We are halfway into the 45-day open enrollment period, people!! My insurance dies on December 31st. The HealthCare.gov site says they do not yet have all the data from providers about who will accept which plans, and the doctors I go to tell me they do not yet have access to all the information they need in order to know which plans they will accept.
Health insurance companies cannot seem to make decent websites or mobile apps, either. In the last few years, I have had Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona, Health Net, and Meritus. None of them had a website that allowed me to do what I needed to do. What is more, when I look at the App Store to see which insurance companies make the best iPhone apps, what I find is that every single insurance company app is rated one out of five stars. The typical reviews are: “crap,” “useless,” and “crashes.” And don’t even get me started on HealthCare.gov…
And then there is cost. I was spending over $500 a month before Obamacare on a COBRA plan I kept after quitting a job. I was thrilled to find my first Obamacare plan for just over half the cost of my COBRA plan. The next year, the best I could do was a plan for $328. This year, it looks like the best I can do is a plan for $336. In two years, cost has crept up over 25%. If that keeps up, I’m going to back to spending over $500 a month by 2018.
Do I hate Obama? No. I voted for him two terms in a row. But I sure hate health insurance right now. Ugh!
Daniel Greene 
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