I’m old enough to remember when health insurance was affordable. It wasn’t all that long ago; it was before Obamacare passed. Despite being officially called the Affordable Care Act, nothing about it has made health insurance more affordable. The question is, for the higher premiums and larger deductibles we have, are we even getting better coverage? The answer, which shouldn’t shock you, is a big fat “no.”
That’s right, despite paying more, you are also getting less. Health insurance denials and delays have hit record highs, and while many point the finger at insurance companies, accusing them of prioritizing profits over care, they’re not to blame. As Betsy McCaughey points out, the real culprits are the politicians who sold us Obamacare on a pile of lies.
“In 2013, before Affordable Care Act regulations kicked in, insurers denied roughly 1.5% of claims, according to the American Medical Association,” McCaughey points out. “But under ACA rules, denials increased tenfold. Now nearly 15% of claims are denied,” and some insurers are denying a third or more of claims.
Doctors and patients aren’t just battling denials — they’re also tangled in a bureaucratic nightmare of preauthorizations. As McCaughey notes, these delays force doctors to get insurer approval before providing care. And here’s the kicker: the person giving the green light is often unqualified to make those decisions. The AMA warns that an OB-GYN might be the one overriding your neurosurgeon’s recommended treatment.
And the consequences can be deadly.
McCaughey cites the example of a doctor who had a patient with metastatic breast cancer who needed a specific drug combination. But thanks to prior authorization delays, she had to settle for standard chemotherapy, which failed, and the patient died.
Obamacare is killing people.
It’s not just anecdotes. A House Committee on Energy and Commerce investigation found that Cigna overturned 80% of its Medicare Advantage preapproval denials upon appeal, proving that legitimate care is being withheld. And, as McCaughey reports, Cigna’s algorithm, PxDx, denies authorizations in bulk without considering individual cases.
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Why are insurers behaving this way? Critics claim greed, but Obamacare’s rules cap profits. If insurers make more money, they have to refund customers through rebates. The real reason for these practices is the impossible promise baked into the ACA: covering people with preexisting conditions without charging them more.
“The math doesn't work,” explains McCaughey. “Every year, 5% of the population uses over 50% of the health care. That's a fact of nature, politics aside.”
Who wins in this mess? Democrat politicians, of course. The promise of covering preexisting conditions won votes. But as McCaughey aptly notes, the real losers are patients, especially the seriously ill. Managed care’s cost-cutting has left them battling denials, delays, and the risk of subpar treatment. The system that Barack Obama sold to the public as making health insurance and health care better instead made it undeniably worse.
The data is grim. Americans are sicker and living shorter lives since Obamacare’s implementation, contradicting the administration’s rosy claims. Yet Democrats continue to dismiss alternatives like low-cost catastrophic insurance, which could provide basic coverage for the healthy while avoiding the bureaucratic chokehold of today’s plans.
For years now, the narrative has been that Americans like Obamacare. But do they? Perhaps it's time to reexamine it and get something better to replace it.
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