Obamacare, It’s Only Good if You Can Actually Use It

The Affordable Health care Act (Obamacare) has been in for almost a year. Last year we signed up reluctantly but hopefully.

Prior to this we had been self paying, we’re self employed so there’s no health insurance on our salary packages. We weren’t going to but once we discovered that we would be fined 1% of our income it’s seemed silly to have to pay the same amount and NOT receive coverage and so we jumped. I wrote about the process, and being an Aussie and new to all of it, I first had to learn all the terms. HMO, PPO, deductible, copay… It’s a lot to take in. Then we waded through the system which was not ready to be rolled out and couldn’t cope with the amount of people trying to access it.

We found something that seemed to work and went on with our lives…. I got my toe fixed and I got some antibiotics for bronchitis. That’s been the extent of my use. The kids and My Lord Dr King haven’t been to a doctor since we bought our insurance. My Lord Dr King recently went to the dentist, seeing as it had been 10 years, since we left Australia, and figured it was time. The dentist was shocked at how great his teeth were considering the length of time since his last treatment. Of course My Lord Dr King credits all the red wine and acidic alcohol for this.

However it didn’t go smoothly to begin with. While making that appointment, calling around local dentists, he couldn’t find one who would take our insurance. He was actually told straight out by one place “Oh no we don’t take Obamacare, that’s poor people’s insurance”

OK WTF? $1000 a month does not constitute poor people insurance in my book. (that’s just for us, the kids have their own policy)

And anyway, whose business is it what policy we have?

And who says that to someone over the phone!?

That’s the problem with this whole thing! Every place should take every insurance. Private practices shouldn’t be allowed to opt out of taking it, that’s how you begin to get an equal playing field in healthcare.

Anyway, I digress, he finally found a place where our costly insurance was accepted and made an appointment. On the day of the appointment, he turned up at the right time like a responsible patient and waited, and waited and waited…… annnnnnnddddd waited! After asking several times ‘when he would be seen’, he was finally ushered into his consultation 2 hours later. They did a good job and he needed some other work done and made a follow up appointment. That appointment was last week. Knowing what happened last time he assumed he was in for a wait but surely not as long.

He was wrong. After 21/2 waiting in a packed reception area and having the receptionist treating him and other patients with total distain when asked why things were taking so long, he went to the counter. There was a woman there who was obviously in agony, crying and in need of the dentist. So My Lord Dr King said “2 1/2 hours is unacceptable, you’re treating us very badly and this woman is in pain. You cancel my appointment and give it to her right now and then get all these people seen. You’re disrespecting me and disrespecting everyone in this room, our time is valuable and this is unacceptable. And furthermore we all deserve to be treated better, without us as patients you wouldn’t have a job.” Or words that effect 😉 When he finished, the entire waiting room erupted into applause.

That evening we found a great online service, where we could search doctors who took our particular brand of insurance, booked in for the same procedure he didn’t get done and we were happy to be done.

But the following morning the dentist called to cancel, telling us they don’t take any Obamacare insurances anymore.

It’s seems doctors are jumping ship everywhere and so what’s happening is that the clinics which see medicare/medicaid patients are now picking up the overflow and so there is LOTS of waiting.

If this is what we get for $1000 a month we don’t want it. We could save that $12,000 and self pay. We’re not at the doctor every week. It’s an incredible waste.

We cancelled… we’ll pay the fine. (And before you all freak out, we do have back up for serious stuff in OZ, so we’re not really uninsured)

It’s great that the government is trying to fix the current system which is unfair and expensive, but this, isn’t working. And we use insurance hardly at all! I can’t imagine how people who have medical issues cope!

But hey once again I use my catch cry, I’m just an Aussie who’s used to universal healthcare, I know nothing of this except my own experiences.

Have you had good or bad experiences?

Comments 4

  1. Interesting… I’ve been wondering how ObamaCare is working. I’m sold on the Aussie-style Health Care system and hope that the US eventually works out the kinks and gets its act together with something similar…

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  2. Ugh. A 2 1/2 hour wait is just not acceptable anywhere, let alone at the dentist’s office or doctor’s office. It sounds like there are a lot of bugs yet to be worked out with that system. Glad you are covered for the big stuff, in the mean time!

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