Obamacare: Higher Prices and Limited Access to Cancer Treatment Centers. What a Deal.

pelosigavelWhile President Barack Hussein Obama and his wife, Michelle are getting ready for their next Photo Op, the funeral of South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, Obama’s Signature Legislation, The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacar,e continues to circle down the porcelain receptacle.

The latest revelation is the fact that, when Americans sign up for Health Insurance Policies under the ACA, they will not have access to several of the top Hospitals in the country, including the world famous Cancer Centers. In fact, it was the lead story on The Drudge Report, last night.

However, the story has been around a while.

Back during the second week in November, Robert Goldberg, Vice-President of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest and publisher of alueofinnovation.org, wrote the following Op Ed for The New York Post

ObamaCare is supposed to be a huge boon for anyone with a pre-existing condition. Count that another promise broken: It’s actually denying care because of pre-existing conditions.

Millions of Americans with cancer and other chronic illnesses will wind up paying more for lifesaving care, if they can get it all.

To keep costs down, the White House designed ObamaCare plans as cut-rate HMOs. The low profit margins have forced insurers to downsize the number of doctors and hospitals in their networks — and to slash what they cover for out-of-network treatment.

So most ObamaCare plans don’t include the vast majority of the best cancer doctors and cancer centers. That’s a huge problem for these patients. As Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former Medicare official, writes: “Cancer patients often need the help of specialized doctors and cancer institutions that won’t make it into many of these cheapened networks.”

All across the country, leading cancer centers — including New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering — are excluded by the largest plans. In Washington state, the largest exchange plans exclude world-class cancer care for kids such as the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. California’s state-of-the-art Cedars-Sinai cancer center isn’t in any ObamaCare plan. Only a few plans include the Mayo Clinic.

And if you want a doctor outside such networks, you’ll generally have to pay the full cost of care.

Many people will get better coverage at a lower cost under ObamaCare (after all, the feds are spending hundreds of billions on it). But most cancer patients will wind up paying more for less.

Take Michael Cerpok, a leukemia survivor in Fountain Hills, Ariz. Right now, his monthly premium is about half his monthly take-home pay. But the ObamaCare law forced his insurer to kill that plan for one that fits the law’s rules.

Now he’ll have to pay more for drugs, and his Mayo Clinic doctor is no longer in his network.

Last year, his treatment bill was more than $350,000, but thanks to insurance his out-of-pocket was only $4,500. Now, to keep his doctor, the one who has kept him alive for seven years, Cerpok will have to pay $26,000 out-of-pocket.

ObamaCare also stints on drug coverage, severely limiting the medicines plans cover. Many pre-Obama plans just charged a co-pay of about $50-70 a month for cancer drugs. Under ObamaCare, thousands of cancer patients will have to pay more than $2,500 a month for medicines.

Horribly, ObamaCare is limiting access to new medicines just as a revolution is delivering far better treatments. More than 40 new treatments target the genetic source of tumors, as opposed to older therapies that kill cancer cells after they spread. On average, ObamaCare plans cover only 10 targeted therapies, and insurers don’t have to add new breakthroughs until 2016.

A study by Avalere Health found that up to 90 percent of ObamaCare plans will force cancer patients to cover half the cost of new drugs until they hit the out-of-pocket maximum. By comparison, only 29 percent of non-ObamaCare employer-based plans do so.

Many patients will just give up. Another Avalere study found that people are four times more likely to stop using innovative therapies if they have to pay $500 or more.

South Carolinan Bill Elliott, 50, and a late-stage lung-cancer survivor, is looking at doing just that. He reports that premiums for his family will jump from $150 to $1,500 a month. His doctor isn’t in the ObamaCare network and neither are his medicines, so he’s thinking about stopping altogether, “pay the $95 or whatever fine and I’m just going to let nature take its course,” because he doesn’t want to burden his family.

Forget the Web site and other disasters: The ugliest part of ObamaCare is how it denies life-saving coverage to cancer patients. That isn’t a “glitch”; it’s a cruel and key feature of the law.

Additionally, Zeke Emmanuel, the architect of Obamacare, appeared on Fox News Sunday, where he was forced to admit that if you like your doctor, you are going to have to pay out the wazzoo (that’s a medical term) to keep him, as weeklystandard.com reports:

The host, Chris Wallace, said: “President Obama famously promised, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Doesn’t that turn out to be just as false, just as misleading, as his promise about if you like your plan, you can keep your plan? Isn’t it a fact, sir, that a number, most, in fact, of the Obamacare health plans that are being offered on the exchanges exclude a number of doctors and hospitals to lower costs?”

“The president never said you were going to have unlimited choice of any doctor in the country you want to go to,” said the Obamacare architect.

“No. He asked a question. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. Did he not say that, sir?”

“He didn’t say you could have unlimited choice.”

“It’s a simple yes or no question. Did he say if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor?”

“Yes. But look, if you want to pay more for an insurance company that covers your doctor, you can do that. This is a matter of choice. We know in all sorts of places you pay more for certain — for a wider range of choices or wider range of benefits.The issue isn’t the selective networks. People keep saying, Oh, the problem is you’re going to have a selective network–”

“Well, if you lose your doctor or lose your hospital–”

“Let me just say something,” said Emanuel. “People are going to have a choice as to whether they want to pay a certain amount for a selective network or pay more for a broader network.”

“Which will mean your premiums will probably go up.”

“They get that choice. That’s a choice they always made.”

“Which means your premium may go up over what you were paying so that, in other words —

“No one guaranteed you that your premium wouldn’t increase. Premiums have been going up.”

“The president guaranteed me I could keep my doctor,” said Wallace.

“And if you want to, you can pay for it,” said Emanuel.

Hold on a minute, Hoss. I thought that Obamacare was supposed to provide the best in affordable Healthcare for all Americans.

You mean, not only are Americans limited in what treatment we can get, we have to pay more to our family doctor?

Gosh, if only someone would have warned Americans what a bum deal Obamacare was going to be.

**cough** **cough**

Until He Comes,

KJ

6 thoughts on “Obamacare: Higher Prices and Limited Access to Cancer Treatment Centers. What a Deal.

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