More obamacare Crap

obamacare is the goose that just keeps crapping all over the place. The latest example:

The President famously promised that you could keep your health plan and doctor. For many people, both of those pledges are turning out to be false. And now, you might not be able to keep your medicine, either.

There are two reasons why. The first has to do with the higher out of pocket costs patients will face. The second issue may be even more significant.

The first reason - the higher out of pocket costs - is a little complicated to follow, but the linked article does a good job of walking you through it. I won't belabor the point, other than to note:

Simply put, many drugs may not be covered at all, and the costs patients incur by buying them with cash won’t count against out of pocket caps. This has repercussions for drug makers with big portfolios of specialty and primary care drugs... But most of all, it has implications for patients.

The second issue goes back to the removal of choice -- our choice -- from healthcare decisions.

Obamacare is a throwback to the old HMO model of the 1990s, which promised a broad package of coverage for primary care benefits like vaccines, and routine doctor visits. But to pay for these benefits, the Obamacare plans skimp on other things – principally the number of doctors you’ll have access to, and also, the number of costlier branded drugs...

Many Americans rejected these restrictive HMO model plans in the 1990s, in favor of PPO-style plans that had higher cost sharing for routine health services, but offered broader access to doctors and have bigger drug formularies. What Obamacare says, in effect, is that Americans made the wrong choice when they rejected those HMO plans in favor of PPOs. The President thinks the more comprehensive, but restrictive HMOs were the better choice after all.

Hey barry, I've got news for you. I'm a reasonably intelligent and competent adult. I like to make my own decisions, not have some empty-suit policy wonk who has no clue about how the real world works make them for me.

As my Brit friends say, "Bugger off!"