Age of the Geek

Is The Healthcare Glass Half-Full or Half-Empty?
  
                In spite of my strong support of the law, I’ll admit it. Obamacare is a mess.
     Don’t get me wrong, I still support it. The fact is that the health care exchanges provided me the first reasonable opportunity for health insurance in my life. Before Obamacare, health insurance simply wasn’t a viable option. I may have been risking financial ruin had I needed an expensive medical procedure, but any health insurance plan that I could afford had such meager benefit that it would have left me financially ruined if I ever had to use it anyway.
     When the health care exchanges came up, thanks to the tax credit subsidy, I was able to get a plan that wouldn’t break my bank account from month-to-month and wouldn’t leave me in unending debt if I ever actually needed it.
     Not that I did. I paid my monthly premiums to CoOpprotunity and all I ever really got out of it was a single check-up. But that’s OK. I knew going in that would probably be the case.
     After all, getting young and healthy people like me to pay into health insurance plans was the entire point of the Affordable Care Act. While the government subsidized my premiums, I was subsidizing everybody else’s.
     I was fine with this right up until last November, when CoOpportunity decided I still wasn’t paying them enough. With about a 60 percent increase, my completely manageable premium for 2014 became a completely unacceptable premium for 2015. Of course that percentage is inflated since it doesn’t take into account the subsidy, but at the end of the day that doesn’t matter to my wallet. It was just too expensive.
     So I let the free market work its magic. After several ridiculous phone calls between CoOpportunity and HealthCare.gov, I managed to cut through enough red tape to make sure my policy wouldn’t be renewed for 2015.
     It appears that I wasn’t the only one either. While I was starting my search for another health insurance provider, CoOpportunity folded completely.
     On the plus side, the free market kind of worked. I was able to find a new insurance provider with a better plan. Well, “better” is a strong word. The premium is a bit higher and the benefits aren’t quite as good, but at least it was better than the alternatives.
     Unfortunately for me, while canceling an insurance policy through the exchanges has been a bureaucratic nightmare, it was nothing compared to the red tape and headache of switching to a new policy.
     First I missed the December deadline to apply because the HealthCare.gov operator told me that I wasn’t eligible for the subsidy. I was just starting the process of appeal when a different operator double checked and informed me that the first operator had made a mistake on my application and I did qualify for the subsidy after all.
     With that worked out, I made my application with Coventry Health Care of Iowa near the start of the year, so at least I would have coverage starting in February. I called them immediately after and they told me it would take a few days to process my application.
     I called a couple more times in January, but got nowhere. They passed me around their phone system, leaving me with hold music that I’m certain is a violation of the Geneva Convention.
     Life eventually distracted me and it wasn’t until mid-February that I realized I had yet to hear anything from my supposed new health care provider. I hadn’t received a statement, a phone call or any other form of communication. So I called them once again to check the status of my policy.
     It was at this point that I was informed that not only had my application gone through, but my policy had been canceled three days prior because of non-payment. I had somehow managed to lose my health insurance before I was able to confirm that I had it. (And to really stick the knife in, I received Coventry’s “You need to pay now!” letter four days after that phone call.)
     To say I was upset about the lack of communication would be an understatement.
     So, I started from square one. Fortunately, at this point I knew the procedure by heart. I made another application with HealthCare.gov and, not trusting Coventry to get me the appropriate paperwork, called them to pay my first premium over the phone.
     At this point, I am reasonably certain that I have health insurance again, but this has not been a great experience. The Affordable Care Act is a terrible piece of legislation. Its policies are inefficient and creates a wall of red tape that should be completely unnecessary.
     And it’s still far and above better than what we had before.
 
     Travis Fischer is a news writer for Mid-America Publishing and can't wait for the ACA to be repealed and replaced... by a single payer system.