In a stroke of marketing genius, Obamacare was not called the “Available Care Act.” I learned this first hand when evaluating how a transition to Obamacare would impact my family. For just a moment, let’s ignore the cost of health insurance – we will cover cost in a future post – and focus on what matters most in a life or death situation, is Obamacare available when healthcare is needed?
Is Obamacare Available?
Whether Obamacare is available is a question that must be evaluated individually. In your situation are current doctors and hospitals under Obamacare available within the network? Being in the network means the Affordable Care Act will pay the medical bills. Here are the results of the analysis for my family:
- Hospitals – a 40% reduction in hospitals that are “in network” in the state of New Hampshire.
- Doctors – a 20% reduction in doctors that we often visit that are in network.
Starting with doctors, we lose access to doctors we routinely visit. This is a disruptive and uncomfortable change. This is not a case of losing doctors whom we hardly know and don’t need. In this case, we are losing access to doctors who have performed complicated surgical procedures, for which more may be necessary. This is a major negative for any insurance plan. Given a choice, this is an automatic rejection of a new healthcare plan.
As for hospitals, 40% of the hospitals in the state of New Hampshire are not part of the Obamacare available network. Not having access to hospitals covered by our plan is definitely a concern. Major parts of the state, including the state capital, do not have hospitals covered by the Obamacare network.
In summary, Obamacare failed the test of being available for my family. Looking simply at hospital coverage, it’s reasonable to say that Obamacare is a losing option for many residents of New Hampshire. After all, access to healthcare is the number one priority when healthcare is required. For us Obamacare fails the availability test.
While this report is specific to one family, the situation is not unique. This link to MSN Money is a recent story titled Beware Obamacare’s Narrow Network.
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