By KAREN PARKER | County Line Publisher
Poor Emilie. This week the sad-faced blonde caught my attention on a CNN commercial that depicts her grim tale of losing her health insurance after the Affordable Care Act (better known as Obamacare) took effect.
I admit that I have not been too impressed with Obamacare. Some aspects are certainly good. Who wouldn’t want to see the cap on lifetime expenses removed and insurance companies prohibited from denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions?
But the much-touted “marketplace” that would offer competitive rates has turned out to be a dud, at least in this area. The only feasible offerings are what we always had: Gundersen Lutheran and Mayo Health System. A few Dean Care plans are offered, but that would mean traveling to Madison for major accidents and illness. That’s not within easy reach for a patient who requires a long hospitalization or an extended period of treatments. Furthermore, the rates for the plans vary little from what could be obtained in the private market, even with the subsidies.
Emilie peers at us from behind a row of pill bottles and says she has lupus. I am not an expert on lupus, but I do know it is a serious autoimmune illness. My sister-in-law suffered with it for decades, her life laced with multiple hospitalizations, drug therapies and medical visits until she finally became my late sister-in-law.
Yet Emilie tells us that even with this chronic illness, she paid only $53 a month for health insurance. Wow! I pay eight times that for an employee who doesn’t have chronic health issues. But then Obamacare arrived, and Emilie received a cancellation letter from her insurance carrier and is now forced to take a part-time job to pay the premiums for insurance she was forced to purchase in the marketplace.
Emilie’s story is so compelling that you would think CNN would drag itself away from the latest Justin Bieber scandal and send out a reporter to interview her. But that did not appear to be in the offing, so I turned to the Web, where more than a few news magazines, including Slate and the Daily Kos, had some of the same questions I had.
Emilie’s insurance at the low-low bargain basement price of $53 a month was provided by CoverTN, a plan offered by the state of Tennessee to residents who had chronic conditions and were unable to obtain or afford private insurance. The payout per year was capped at $25,000, which is a pittance in the world of medical care. It gets worse. Of that $25,000, Emilie’s plan limited her to $10,000 a year in hospital costs and $250 a quarter for drugs.
The Affordable Care Act considers this a “junk” policy and refused Tennessee’s efforts to get a waiver. Sadly, the state knew this for nearly four years before finally writing a letter to its policyholders notifying them they would no longer be covered.
It’s hard to know why Emilie settled for such an inadequate policy when she had a debilitating disease. It is possible she had a milder form of lupus that responds better to treatment. Tennessee did offer a high-risk policy similar to those offered in Wisconsin. The premiums were slightly more than the Obamacare policy she says costs $373 a month. The Obamacare policy has better benefits, with no deductible and only $1,500 a year in out-of-pocket expense. That’s a sweet deal compared with what is offered in the Coulee Region.
Emilee also might have qualified for a subsidy if Tennessee hadn’t refused federal Medicaid money.
It might interest you to know that Americans for Prosperity, a political action group funded largely by the Koch brothers, paid for this commercial. Yeah, the same gas and oil tycoons who yank Gov. Walker’s leash.
One would think Obamacare has enough flaws that it would not be necessary to resort to such deception to make a case against it.
One also might be mildly curious why CNN has no interest in reporting the news right in front of it.
Gee, I wonder if it has anything to do with Americans for Prosperity’s pledge of $2.5 million to defeat three Democratic senators who voted for Obamacare and its allotment of $400,000 in advertising. In the 2012 election cycle, Americans for Prosperity spent more than $36.5 million on behalf of its favored candidates. And here comes the 2014 election cycle. Yummy!
Never bite the hand that feeds you.
