Wait, what?
So you’re admitting Lobohan’s 80% was accurate? Or am I misreading that?
Your anecdote, like any other singular anecdote, is utterly worthless. Thanks though.
Do the goalposts look better from there? I hope your didn’t hurt your back carrying them so far.
Okay, so we’re both happy, you admit that your cite was utter horseshit, and that 70% of California’s doctors aren’t boycotting Obamacare like you stated earlier in this thread. And I admit to the sin of checking provider lists before I looked for doctors. <3
Terr, you’re simply wrong. When I had insurance through my employer, ( the insurance was through Aetna), I had to check their list of approved providers to find a doctor who was in their network. For sure no Kaiser doctor would be. So this is nothing new.
This sentence doesn’t make sense unless one distinguishes between primary and specialty care.
Most American physicians are specialists, an absurd situation that makes finding a good family physician, or associated alternative (nurse practitioner or physician assistant) difficult. This is not so much because of small networks as because lots of the good ones are not accepting new patients regardless of your plan.
Other than getting a recommendation from a medical professional you trust, probably the best way to find a good family practice is to search here for one with Patient Centered Medical Home certification:
Matching up names from a link, like the one above, to your heath plan’s list, and then finding one who is nearby and accepts new patients, and then sticking with them only if the provider is a good patient listener, can be hard. This isn’t because of ACA, but because of too many specialty residency spots and not enough for family medicine and primary pediatrics. ACA actually has some incentives to help this.
Once you do get a good family doc, the likelihood is that specialty physicians who they work with are at the same hospital and accept the same plan.
I did say earlier that my wife and I don’t let our family doc tell us which specialist to use. That’s because, five years ago, our family doc moved to Wilmington Delaware to be a health executive, and we followed him! Hardly anyone would do that. As a result, if we need a specialist, we call the much closer prestigious Ivy League hospital and take whomever they give us. This is a bad system that should be discouraged, and we only do it because of the family doc shortage makes us willing to travel a long way, just for the family doc. A better idea would be for us to have care referred out by our Wilmington doc to other Wilmington (actually Christiana Care) docs that know and work with each other, as it should be.
There could be another problem if we used a profit-making hospital, as they typically have independent specialists who often have different insurance memberships from other docs at that hospital. This is a bad model. Stick to physicians that are employed by, or at least closely allied to, integrated non-profit health care organizations. See:
The number of docs in the network does not matter. What matters is who they are and how they work together.
Here is the goalpost from post #76 (and the one which you quoted in your responses):
“Yes, and I am sure those tens of thousands of people will be thrilled when they find out that 70% of doctors they call don’t accept Obamacare. And will be really thankful to Democrats.”
That’s the goalpost.
What is new is the fact that only 30% or less of all doctors you can call will be in the new networks of the new Obamacare policies. Never have those networks have been so narrow.
But, that goalpost means that 70% of doctors don’t accept any Obamacare plans, not that they accept one plan but not another plan. That is, if the patients called and asked whether a physician takes any Obamacare plans at all, you’re position is that 70% of those doctors called would say no. This is clearly untrue.
I also find it bizarre that you look for doctors at random from a phonebook or something. I have Blue Cross/Blue Shield at work and I always start with their online provider listing, because starting with random doctors and asking whether they take BCBS would be silly.
I think that if I were lied to this blatantly by the news sources I follow, I would find different news sources. Live and learn – that’s my philosophy. What’s yours?
No, it means that for that particular person who’s calling the doctors, 70% of the doctors do not accept his plan. As in (I quote again)
“Yes, and I am sure those tens of thousands of people will be thrilled when they find out that 70% of doctors they call don’t accept Obamacare. And will be really thankful to Democrats.”
Because it is utterly not important or relevant to the person calling whether the doctor he calls accepts some other Obamacare insurance. It is important whether the doctor accepts his Obamacare insurance.
I don’t call doctors at random. I ask people to recommend doctors, then call them. I have yet to find one that does not accept my insurance.
Here is a moved goalpost.
Then you slip into your ignorant 30% for an individual plan nonsense.
You ignore both my preamble and the other articles I posted. From Bloomberg, Forbes and CNN.
I reiterate the goalpost:
“It’s going to be fun watching the liberals trying to spin things when the newly-minted Obamacare participants next year, eager to use their benefits, will frantically try to find doctors who accept their plans and fail.”
Only someone who doesn’t understand how insurance works in America would call doctors at random. Everyone who has dealt with insurance, looks at a list of providers.
If anecdotes suddenly have power, every time I’ve gotten insurance, I was given a list or a link to find providers that accept it.
Narrow Networks are a cost-saving measure. It’s been happening for awhile.
Either your memory is faulty, you got lucky, or you asked people you work with, so they have the same insurance.
Good on you, for successfully blundering through the world of insurance.
So you typed that line for no reason? Just slipped?
Didn’t have no nothin’ to do with the point of your post? Well, shucks!
Again, I dealt with insurance all my life. With my current insurance, I have yet to call a doc who doesn’t accept it.
If less than 3 out of 10 doctors accepted my insurance, I would certainly be disappointed with it.
And it hasn’t occurred to you that there might be some overlap between people who haven’t dealt with the American health insurance industry before and people who are being forced to deal with the American health insurance industry by government mandate?
Even a novice should be able to follow directions. The first time I had insurance, I chose from a list of providers, because a list of providers was given to me. I suspect most people could manage that.
Terr is claiming expertise and demonstrating ignorance.
Forced is a strong word, by the way. Feel free to not have insurance. Just pay your fine and hope for the best.
This means you are not in an HMO. Right now, I am not, either.
However, most of the Pennsylvania exchange plans are HMO’s, at least in the sense that you need a referral from your primary provider for a specialist visit. So the patient doesn’t get the specialist’s name off a list – the name is given to the patient.
There are better and worse HMO’s, just as there are better and worse primary care providers. But the basic idea – that your family doc should be coordinating your care, working as a team with any needed consultants AKA specialists – is all to the good.
No thank you. I always avoided HMOs like a plague. I pick my doctors. I pick my GP. And I pick my specialists. I may take GP’s advice, but I will not allow him to limit my choice.
Not all HMOs pick the referral. You can still pick from a list of providers that work with the insurance company. The referral simply means the PCP agrees you need the specialist and approves the visit to the doctor you choose (perhaps from a list of approved participants).
If you use any insurance you are generally limited to participating providers if you want the insurance to pay. A PCP coordinating your care doesn’t always mean they pick the docs. My mom has PCP coordinate her care, for example, to make sure someone is looking over all her different meds to make sure she’s not being over medicated. Her PCP is a gerontologist.
As I mentioned before, so far I have been picking my specialists myself, and I have not come across one yet that didn’t take my insurance. When you call a doc to make an appointment for the first time, what insurance you have is the first thing they ask. If, as with the California’s Obamacare policies, my “success rate” in such calls was less than 30% (instead of the 100% now), I’d certainly be disappointed with my insurance.
Sounds like youre in a Single Payer system.