HuffPo -- How Obamacare Leaves People Without Doctors!

Decided to give this its own thread.
SIAP.

quote:

---

How Obamacare Leaves People Without Doctors
by Kathleen Miles
04/10/2014

LOS ANGELES - In January, a doctor told Noam Friedlander, who was suffering from excruciating lower back pain, that she needed surgery to remove part of a severely herniated disc. Friedlander had Blue Shield insurance through Covered California, California's version of Obamacare, and planned to use it to cover the costs of the operation.

But when she started to call surgeons covered by Blue Shield, she ran into a roadblock. Surgeons who were covered by her insurance operated out of hospitals no longer covered by her insurance -- or vice versa. Friedlander spent days on the phone, hours on hold, making dozens of calls across Southern California, trying to match a surgeon with a hospital that would both be covered. In total, she reached out to 20 surgeons and five hospitals.

"No one could help me. Some expressed sympathy," Friedlander, 40, told The Huffington Post in an email. "They told me, 'I'm so sorry -- it's all just so new. You're a victim of the changes. No one knows what they're doing.'"

Unable to match a hospital and a surgeon that were both covered, Friedlander started haggling between doctors for a cash price for the surgery. She chose a surgeon who wasn't covered by her insurance but who operated in a hospital that was covered. She expects her insurance to pay the hospital bill, but she had to pay for her surgeon's bill herself. In the end, she had to take out two credit cards so she could pay $16,000 out of pocket.

LINK

---

As I've said previously, these Exchange Plans are a buyer beware prospect. This poor lady probably assumed the Exchange version of BCBS was identical to normal BCBS Plans in coverage. She had no idea what she actually had bought was Obamacaid. She had no idea how badly her policy sucked.

$16K oop later, and she now knows.