A Maryland woman is getting the Obamacare runaround treatment in Maryland’s state “exchange” (exchange of what, exactly?). The woman, after months of trying, finally got signed up—she thought—through one of Obamacare’s Navigators and was given a confirmation number and a printout of her selected plan.
Her Democrat Representative, Barbara Mikulski, has declined to help (help with what? The woman is signed up, isn’t she? See below); Mikulski would only commit to empty words of…commiseration:
I am just as frustrated as you are about the launch of health reform. I am particularly disappointed that the exchange websites did not operate smoothly for Marylanders.
Yeah, that’s helpful. And Mikulski plainly still thinks the problem is just with the software of a Web site, and not in the law itself. Hmm….
Again, signed up for what?
the selected insurance company has no record of her
the state navigation system has no record of her
Never mind the printout and confirmation number. Especially never mind the confirmation number.
both the Maryland Health Connection and the troubleshooting site assured the woman “that somebody would get back to me within two to three days;” nobody has.
The governor’s office—not the Governor or his head of the Maryland Office of Health Care Reform apparently, just a staffer—called the woman and assured her that they would send a manual application “next week.”
However. The Catch-22 gotcha:
she would have to pay two months of premiums this week
the provider doesn’t have any record of her (see above)
and so the provider is unable to tell her the premium
It just doesn’t get any better than this with government-directed (I hesitate to say “-managed”) health coverage and health care programming.
I actually know someone in the Nebraska who has signed up and is paying premiums. Just one, mind you. I’m just waiting for her to go in to a doctor’s office and present a card (does the government give cards?) and be told that she has no insurance. At a human level, I hope that’s not what happens. But it just seems to be the next logical step.
The other side of that fairness coin is the doctor-as-victim. Most of them won’t refuse treatment on being confronted with a sick person who has no insurance; although they’ll be constrained in how much treatment they can afford to give.
And some doctors just don’t have it in them to say “No,” under any circumstance. Of course that’s on them, but there’s that do no harm thing….
Eric Hines