From Pro Publica:
San Francisco architect Lee Hammack says he and his wife, JoEllen Brothers, are “cradle Democrats.” They have donated to the liberal group Organizing for America and worked the phone banks a year ago for President Obama’s re-election.
Since 1995, Hammack and Brothers have received their health coverage from Kaiser Permanente, where Brothers worked until 2009 as a dietitian and diabetes educator. “We’ve both been in very good health all of our lives – exercise, don’t smoke, drink lightly, healthy weight, no health issues, and so on,” Hammack told me.
“From all of the sob stories I’ve heard and read, ours is the most extreme,” Lee told me in an email last week.
Hammack and Brothers apparently didn't know that a healthcare scheme concocted by a president with no medical, business, insurance or reality experience, then finger-f***ed by a Congress selling freebies for votes, and then implemented by contractors with nothing on their resumes but political connections.... Well, they just thought the idea would somehow work.
Hammack recalled his reaction when he and his wife received a letters from Kaiser in September informing him their coverage was being canceled. “I work downstairs and my wife had a clear look of shock on her face,” he said. “Our first reaction was clearly there’s got to be some mistake. This was before the exchanges opened up. We quickly calmed down. We were confident that this would all be straightened out. But it wasn’t.”
Sweet, sweet little rabbits. Let me explain the world to you. If you hand over control of your life to other people, they're not going to concern themselves with what you need. Their concern will be for 1) the needs of themselves and their families, 2) the needs of their supporters, and finally 3) your needs. It's always been that way. You can look it up.
I asked Hammack to send me details of his current plan. It carried a $4,000 deductible per person, a $40 copay for doctor visits, a $150 emergency room visit fee and 30 percent coinsurance for hospital stays after the deductible. The out-of-pocket maximum was $5,600.
This plan was ending, Kaiser’s letters told them, because it did not meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act. “Everything is taken care of,” the letters said. “There’s nothing you need to do.”
The letters said the couple would be enrolled in new Kaiser plans that would cost nearly $1,300 a month for the two of them (more than $15,000 a year).
And for that higher amount, what would they get? A higher deductible ($4,500), a higher out-of-pocket maximum ($6,350), higher hospital costs (40 percent of the cost) and possibly higher costs for doctor visits and drugs.
This couple's old plan was what they wanted.
Barack Obama knows what they really need.
Here's some Rolling Stones.
You can't always get what you want. But if you vote for Obama, you'll get what you need.
