A long-time friend of mine who lives in Arizona posted his experience with Obamacare on Facebook the other day and I asked if I could share it with the DKos community and the wider world.
His perspective is a little different. It really punches home the change that the ACA has brought about on health care, on the insurance industry, stripping it down to the economic basics of the situation.
Please read, enjoy, comment, share. I'm hoping to spread his success story as widely as possible.
Thank you.
MY EXPERIENCE WITH OBAMACARE
Here is my experience with Obamacare. It was a pain in the ass to sign up for. I went through that whole EXPERIENCE of the website not working, problems with the site when it did work, lost data, everything. But, I finally got signed up.
I was given a list of FORTY health care insurance providers. It seemed like a daunting task to go through them all. However, under Obamacare, all forty are guaranteed, GUARANTEED, to offer the same service under whatever "plan" you are signed up for. Me? I took the Silver Plan. So all providers are guaranteed to offer the same thing.
What does that make the service? It makes it a commodity. When anything is a commodity, the only variable to consider is price. Price is the only thing that differentiates a commodity.
Obamacare is a beautiful thing. It took all forty health care providers, cut through their bullshit, and made them the same service. Obviously, I picked the cheapest price. No more "research" of each plan. Just go with the cheapest price under whatever plan you signed up under. This is going to drive the price down over all. Everything is greatly simplified. It's beautiful and whoever thought this up is a genius.
My knees have been bothering me. I saw a joint and bone specialist. I got a shot of cortisone in my left knee. I am walking around much better now. Then, right after, I got a terrible ear infection. It was both an inner and outer ear infection. It was horrible.
I went to Emergency Care (twice); I went to the Emergency Room (once); I went to my new Doctor (once). I had to take antibiotic pills and antibiotic drops. The Emergency Care & Doctor visits were a $15.00 copay. The Emergency Room visit was 80% covered. The medications were cheap under the copay.
This ear infection thing was horrible, HORRIBLE, and I would have been in a very bad way without this new health insurance. And the beauty of this Obamacare is that they have cut through all of the mumbo jumbo of the insurance companies and made it searchable by price alone. The mumbo jumbo is how they kept us in the dark. Now, everything is clean and simplified and price is the only thing that matters.
As far as I know, I am the only one who is talking about this benefit of Obamacare which is THE benefit in my opinion.