If you’re like me and sometime gave your email to Healthcare.gov, then you’ve probably getting the daily reminders this past week about December 15th being the last day you can sign up on the Health Insurance Exchange if you want to get health insurance coverage starting January 1st. I wish they would have made the email system a little smarter and let us click a button that said “Already got my insurance this year.” Although, I appreciate that they’re just trying to make sure that everyone knows the timelines.
Based on the news coverage (or lack therof), it seems that Healthcare.gov has survived without any major issues this year. One thing that has annoyed me about the emails is they keep telling me how many people’s health insurance is getting subsidized on the exchanges. It seems that about 8 out of 10 people who get insurance from the exchange are getting a government subsidy.
I guess that means I’m in the 20%. Maybe their marketing is working great for those who can get the subsidy. However, it has the opposite impact on someone who does’t get the government subsidy. In fact, my insurance costs have nearly doubled since pre-Obamacare days.
Turns out, that because I wasn’t getting any government subsidies for my insurance, it was better for me to just go direct to the insurance company. That’s what I did and the process was super simple. In fact, I signed up for a plan that included ZDoggMD’s Turntable Health. I’m especially excited to do e-Visits and text message my doctor as needed. Plus, I’m going to have to see about tapping into the free yoga classes and demonstration kitchen. You can sure I’ll be writing more about this in the future.
I found this piece from HIStalk to be quite interesting:
A Kaiser Health News story called “Federal defense contractors find a new profitable business: Obamacare” notes that HHS’s business purchases doubled to $21 billion in the last decade and are rising, making it the #3 contracting agency, beating out NASA, Homeland Security, and the combined spending of Departments of Justice, Transportation, Treasury, and Agriculture.
Sorry if this post was a bit of a rambling rant. I just saw the deadline and needed to get it out of my system. I think the next 5 years we’re going to see a dramatic change in healthcare as we know it. As a blogger, that means I’ll have plenty to write about. As a patient, I have some cause for concern.
