By Marc
Siegel March 9, 2015 | 8:22pm
NY Post
Last
week’s Supreme Court arguments on ObamaCare struck me as a bit irrelevant, and
not just because the case won’t impact New York.
The case is about
whether federal subsidies are actually legal in states that didn’t set up their
own insurance exchanges — but the truth is, ObamaCare is a bad deal even
with the subsidies.
Down here in the
medical trenches, the harsh reality of the Affordable Care Act continues to
play out.
My patients
continue to report delays in signing up for ObamaCare policies and are rarely
happy with what they end up with. They all have high deductibles and a narrow
network of doctors to choose from.
This isn’t their
fault — it’s all they can afford. Of course, without the subsidies, my
blue-collar patients, many of whom work part-time jobs, wouldn’t be able to
afford ObamaCare insurance at all.
Keep in mind that federal
subsidies cover 75 percent of ObamaCare premiums nationwide, so if the high
court upholds the written language of the law, and not the Obama IRS’s decision
to ignore that language, 7.5 million people will likely lose their coverage.
But, again, even
with the subsidies, it’s no bargain.
When you use the
insurance, you find that you have to pay out-of-pocket for your x-ray,
ultrasound or lab work — and keep on paying for tests until you spend enough to
cover your $5,000 deductible.
You can’t afford
the test, so you delay it.
You
also have to pay out of pocket to see your doctor (me) when you’re sick, and
even though I may charge you half price for a visit, you find that the
prominent dermatologist I’d usually refer you to for your severe psoriasis
isn’t part of your new network and won’t give you a discount.
The skin doctor I
come up with instead is less prominent and devises a treatment plan that
doesn’t work that well.
Here in New York,
the law has put in jeopardy the entire way I practice as a primary-care
physician. The law is so heavy with restrictions and penalties, and so light
with actual improvements to care, that it isn’t working well even with the
subsidies.
I spend more than
half of my time on any given day on computer documentation, pre-approvals,
contesting billing errors by labs or hospitals and choosing unknown specialists
from ObamaCare lists to refer patients to.
I see no evidence
that the federal subsidies are going to pay for essential health care. Instead,
they bolster rising premiums and help keep insurance companies solvent and
profitable.
Now here come the
Supremes, wading into ObamaCare deep water once again. If they enforce the
wording of the law — so that subsidies can’t go to those 7.5 million people in
34 states that refused to set up health exchanges — it should be the straw that
breaks the back of the so-called Affordable Care Act.
Or how about this:
the final nail in ObamaCare’s coffin.
It will be a happy
day for doctors and patients everywhere.
Congress and the
president will have to come up with something else.
ObamaCare was
falsely conceived. If Washington wanted to provide a health-care safety net for
the have-nots, it could’ve hired the doctors and built the clinics to deliver
it.
Instead, it built
another bloated, self-justifying bureaucracy that makes the insurance companies
richer and the doctors and patients poorer.
Here’s hoping that
SCOTUS grabs this final straw.
Dr.
Marc Siegel is a professor of medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center and a Fox
News medical correspondent.
Everyone that I know that has
been forced into Obamacare tell me their previous insurance was more
affordable, they were able to see doctors of their choice, and was much less
complicated. The two group of Americans that are “doing okay” with Obamacare
are Insurance Companies, and Bureaucrats!
