Original Source: New York Post
By Post Editorial Board
November 9, 2015 | 2:00pm
Add 250 New York cancer patients to the long list of victims of ObamaCare’s lies — just one more snapshot of the program’s ongoing death spiral.
These New Yorkers are getting treatment at world-renowned Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center — but their ObamaCare policies are about to vanish, as Health Republic, one of the largest health insurers on New York state’s exchange, and the only one to cover Sloan-Kettering treatment, is shutting down at month’s end after losing $130 million.
The state exchange’s “solution”: It’ll give them an extra two weeks to find a new policy — but it has nothing that will save them from having to change hospitals and medical teams. (It is in talks with the hospital about trying to give them an extra year of coverage there — but with no word on who’ll pay.)
Robert Goldberg, vice president of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, warned of the problem two years ago in The Post: ObamaCare’s design screws cancer patients, as well as those with AIDS and other serious conditions.
To save cash, exchange policies offer very narrow networks of providers, and also stint on which medications are covered, while imposing hefty out-of-pocket costs on patients.
“The whole point of the Affordable Care Act was to make it affordable,” Vince Capone, a retired dentist with pancreatic cancer, told Newsday. “If this plan was set up but was priced too low and then went out of business, then I guess the whole thing was a sham.”
Yeah, sham is a good name for it.
The wheels on the ObamaCare bus are falling off one by one. Then again, this isn’t anything new.
Take Health Republic, whose failure is forcing 100,000 New Yorkers to find new coverage. It’s just one of 23 “health cooperatives” across the country launched with a total in $2.5 billion in taxpayer cash — and eight are closing, with another 13 headed there.
ObamaCare’s defenders insist the problem is that Congress wouldn’t give the co-ops even more cash. Others point to how the health “reform” law said the co-ops couldn’t hire anyone with insurance-industry expertise, or spend a dime on marketing.
Anyway, the exchange policies run by for-profit insurers aren’t far behind. They’re hiking premiums big-time this year – up 13 percent on average for the cheapest (“bronze”) plans, according to an Avalere Health study.
And, by the way, new sign-ups are running at half the level once predicted by the Congressional Budget Office.
Worse, the folks who are buying exchange coverage tend to be sicker and older than the “reformers” had expected — which means they’re more expensive to cover, which means premiums will have to keep rising.
Which means that folks who aren’t sick will be even less inclined to buy an ObamaCare plan.
And 2016 is the last year the taxpayers have to provide extra “risk corridor” payments to ObamaCare insurers who lose money because they didn’t charge high-enough premiums — which makes it likely future price spikes will be even larger.
So much for affordable health care.