Cue the funeral bagpipes. My fourth health insurance plan is dead.
Two weeks ago, my husband and I received yet another cancellation notice for our private, individual health insurance coverage. Itâs our fourth Obamacare-induced obituary in four years.
Our first death notice, from Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, arrived in the fall of 2013. The insurer informed us that because of âchanges from health care reform (also called the Affordable Care Act or ACA),â our plan no longer met the federal governmentâs requirements.
Never mind our needs and desires as consumers who were quite satisfied with a high-deductible preferred provider organization that included a wide network of doctors for ourselves and our two children.
Our second death knell, from Rocky Mountain Health Plans, tolled in August 2015. That notice signaled the end of a plan we didnât want in the first place that didnât cover our kidsâ dental care and wasnât accepted at our local urgent care clinic.
The insurer pulled out of the individual market in all but one county in Colorado, following the complete withdrawal from that sector by Humana and UnitedHealthcare.
Our third ânotice of plan discontinuation,â again from Anthem, informed us that the insurer would âno longer offer your current health plan in the state of Coloradoâ in August 2016.
With fewer and fewer choices as know-it-all Obamacare bureaucrats decimated the individual market here and across the country, we enrolled in a high-deductible Bronze HSA EPO (Health Savings Account Exclusive Provider Organization) offered by Minneapolis-based startup Bright Health.
Now, here we are barely a year later: Deja screwed times four. Our current plan will be discontinued on Jan. 1, 2018.
âBut donât worry,â Bright Healthâs eulogy writer chirped, âwe have similar plans to address your needs.â
Riiiiight. Where have I heard those pie-in-the-sky promises before? Oh, yeah. Straight out of the socialized medicine Trojan horseâs mouth.
âIf you like your doctor,â President Barack Obama promised, âyou will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, youâll be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.â
Is pathological lying covered under the Affordable Care Act?
Speaking of Affordable Care Act whoppers, so much for âaffordable.â Our current deductible is $6,550 per personâ$13,100 for our family of four. Assuming we can find a new plan at the bottom of the individual market barrel, our current monthly premium, $944.86, will rise to more than $1,300 a month.
âWhatâs taking place is a market correction; the free market is at work,â says Coloradoâs state insurance commissioner, Marguerite Salazar. â[T]his could be an indication that there were too many options for the market to support.â
This presumptuous central planner called federal intervention to eliminate âtoo manyâ options for consumers the free market at work. Yes, friends, the Rocky Mountain High is real.
This isnât a âmarket correction.â Itâs a government catastrophe.
Premiums for individual health plans in Virginia are set to skyrocket nearly 60 percent in 2018. In New Hampshire, those rates will rise 52 percent.
In South Carolina, individual market consumers will face an average 31.3 percent hike. In Tennessee, theyâll see rates jump between 20-40 percent.
Private, flexible preferred provider organizations for self-sufficient, self-employed people are vanishing by design. The social-engineered futureâhealthy, full-paying consumers being herded into government-run Obamacare exchanges and severely regulated regional health maintenance organizationsâis a bipartisan big government health bureaucracyâs dream come true.
These choice-wreckers had the arrogant audacity to denigrate our pre-Obamacare plans as âsubstandardâ (Obama), âcrappyâ (MSNBC big mouth Ed Schultz), and âjunk policiesâ (Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa).
When I first called attention to the cancellation notice tsunami in 2013, liberal Mother Jones magazine sneered that the phenomenon was âphony.â And theyâre still denying the Obamacare death spiral. Liberal Vox Media recently called the crisis âa lie.â
I donât have enough four-letter words for these propagandists. There are an estimated 450,000 consumers like us in Colorado and 17 million of us nationwideâsmall business owners, independent contractors, and others who donât get their plans through group coverage, big companies, or government employers.
The costs, headaches, and disruption in our lives caused by Obamacareâs meddling meddlers are real and massive.
But weâre puzzles to corporate media journalists whoâve never had to meet a payroll and donât even know what is the individual market.
Weâre invisible to late night TV clowns who get their Obamacare-at-all-costs talking points from Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.
Weâre pariahs to social justice health care activists and Democrats who want us to just shut up and subsidize everyone elseâs insurance.
And weâre expendables to establishment Republicans who hoovered up campaign donations on the empty promise to repeal Obamacareâand now consider amnesty for immigrants here illegally and gun control higher legislative priorities than keeping their damned word.
Weâre the canaries in the Obamacare coal mine. Ignore us at your peril, America. Youâre next.