Insurers Push Plans That Limit Choice of Doctor

[groovedaddy]

As the Obama administration begins to enact the new national health care law, the country’s biggest insurers are promoting affordable plans with reduced premiums that require participants to use a narrower selection of doctors or hospitals.

The plans, being tested in places like San Diego, New York and Chicago, are likely to appeal especially to small businesses that already provide insurance to their employees, but are concerned about the ever-spiraling cost of coverage.

But large employers, as well, are starting to show some interest, and insurers and consultants expect that, over time, businesses of all sizes will gravitate toward these plans in an effort to cut costs.

The tradeoff, they say, is that more Americans will be asked to pay higher prices for the privilege of choosing or keeping their own doctors if they are outside the new networks. That could come as a surprise to many who remember the repeated assurances from President Obama and other officials that consumers would retain a variety of health-care choices.

But companies may be able to reduce their premiums by as much as 15 percent, the insurers say, by offering the more limited plans.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/business/18choice.html?th&emc=th

[BrklynLiberal]

1. Surely, no one can be surprised that the insurance companies still keep their bottom lines as the

highest priority..no matter what promises are made to the public....
The insurance companies will continue to bleed the public for profits any way they can.

Single payer..is the only answer. Why should corporations be allowed to keep making money from the illnesses, and the attempts to avoid illness, of the public?? What do they actually provide for patients that we could not do ourselves if they were not there???

[groovedaddy]

2. Absolutely, single payer. What did we do BEFORE healthcare insurance companies

existed? Take the profit motive out of healthcare.

[BrklynLiberal]

3. My exact thought...All that insurance companies did was step between

patents and their health care providers....to make money. They certainly did not increase efficiency or lower costs.

To quote a very old song:


GOT ALONG WITHOUT YOU BEFORE I MET YOU
GONNA GET ALONG WITHOUT YOU NOW

[area51]

5. +1

No other industrialized nation allows for-profit, unregulated insurance companies to kill citizens.

Each day, 273 people die due to lack of health care in the U.S.

We need single-payer health care, not a welfare bailout for the serial-killer insurance agencies.

[MorningGlow]

4. Meh. I've already had to tussle with that monster.

It's nothing new. When we switched HMOs several years ago (from Aetna to BlueCross/BlueShield), I was called and harassed by a BC/BS rep who threatened to drop our entire coverage (family) because MY doctor wasn't on their "list". Fuck them.

So I got a "doctor beard" and went to him once, for antibiotics for a sinus infection. The rest of the time I went to my regular doctor and self-paid for the office visits. The health coverage still paid for the blood work.

Stupid system.

For the record, Aetna didn't give a rip who my GP was. Now my husband has switched jobs and we have a choice of several HMOs, including Aetna and BC/BS. Needless to say, I will be MORE than happy to go back to Aetna and leave BC/BS behind, the fuckers.