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Thursday, May 1, 2014

The Coming Doctor Disaster

This may sound like a joke:  A man walks into a doctor's office and asks to see the doctor.  The secretary asks for the man's insurance and he produces a card that indicates that he has insurance.  The man got the card by signing up on the Obamacare exchange at the end of March.  After looking at the insurance card, the secretary sends the man in to see the doctor.  The doctor spends 15 minutes with the new patient and ultimately gives him a prescription to help treat his ailments.  So far, so good.  Now comes the problem.  The patient, you see, has not paid for his insurance yet.  Under the latest version of the Obamacare rules that president Obama keeps changing, each buyer of insurance has 90 days during which to pay for the coverage.  The insurance companies, however, are only required to honor that insurance for 30 days after issuance.  If the insurance company pays for treatment during that 30 days and the patient never pays for his insurance, then the federal government will reimburse the insurance company.  Since it is now May and more than 30  days have passed since the insurance supposedly went into effect, however, the insurance company in our example need not (and won't) pay the doctor for the services provided.  The federal government also won't pay the doctor for the services provided.  In short, if the patient who never paid for his insurance gets coverage for 90 days and the doctors and hospitals that treat him during days 31 to 90 have to eat the cost.

How many patients will there be who will run up significant costs at doctors and hospitals with no one ever paying for those services?  How many doctors who are now operating on a narrow profit margin will be badly hurt when these supposedly insured people have to be treated for free?  the number may be much higher than you expect.  According to Congressional sources, as of April 15th, there were fully one-third of those who bought insurance on the federal exchange who had yet to pay their initial premiums.  The Obamacrats are busy telling us that April 15th was only two weeks after the end of the sign up period, so this was just an understandable time lag.  It's just another attempt to mislead us all.  Remember, according to Obama and his people, more than 5 million had purchased insurance by the end of February of this year.  Those people had six and a half weeks to pay AT A MINIMUM.

This is not a small problem.  Why does no one talk about it?




 

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