Medicaid coverage is offered as a part of the social safety net for the poor, but the care is substandard and not intended for Americans who are able to pay for better coverage. Yet several stories have emerged validating early claims made by the law’s critics, who foresaw a side-effect of ObamaCare that will force Americans who aren’t poor into Medicaid coverage.
One such story comes from a woman, whose daughter wrote about her mother’s experience in an article just this week in the Wall Street Journal, who was forced into substandard Medicaid coverage even though she didn’t want it and could purchase better coverage.
“How has it come to this?” Nicole Hopkins asked in the Wall Street Journal. Her mother Charlene was one of the 5 plus million Americans who had her insurance cancelled and shopped for a new insurance plan on the now-infamous HeathCare.gov.
Must to her dismay, the ObamaCare website only offered her one choice, substandard Medicaid coverage.
If she was poor it might have been a blessing, but Charlene Hopkins isn’t poor and doesn’t view herself as poor. Ms. Hopkins is visibly ashamed and clearly admonishes ObamaCare for forcing her to shamefully take what she believes to be a taxpayer funded hand-out. Charlene is proud to have led a life of independence and self-sufficiency, and now she feels as if ObamaCare is taking away her dignity.
Dignity and the traditional American ethic was par for the course on the Wisconsin farm where Charlene was raised by parents who refused to accept government assistance or handouts of their own. Her family was a part of another American generation that found their dignity in working hard and in helping others when they needed it.
“The pride is from being able to take care of yourself in all ways, and health insurance, for example, is just one of those things you do,” she says.
The story of Charlene Hopkins, which was first documented by Doug McKelway at Fox News, smashes the White House narrative that erroneously holds ObamaCare expands options.
It is a familiar, oft-made claim from White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, who just repeated it on Friday. “They’ll have choices they didn’t have in the past, including a range of options when it comes to levels of coverage,” Carney told reporters at the White House press conference.
But the idea that ObamaCare expands options to millions is not true, especially for those Americans receiving cancellation notices who have to settle for substandard Medicaid coverage.
James Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center said, “the system will automatically sign them up for Medicaid, even if they don’t want to be on Medicaid. That’s what’s happening. So a lot of people are getting signed up for Medicaid just by virtue of what their income is.”
Fox News also reported on a Virginia family who asked if they could tell their story on the condition of anonymity. They showed Fox News documents proving their story of being forced into Medicaid coverage as the sole option.
The father outrageously owns a $5 million house, which is already paid for and the family owns three cars. Their kids attend expensive private schools, as well, yet though the father has amassed a fortune but has stopped working, he is considered by the ObamaCare website standards to have no income. His wife has just begun with a new start-up business, but as so many other businesses when starting up, her business has yet to produce profitable income.
The website put him on Medicaid, ignoring net worth figures. He didn’t exactly just let it go, and took to the ObamaCare chat area to alert costumer service. A screen shot of the dialogue given to Fox News reads: “Let 60 minutes show up in front of my 5 million dollars paid for house and tell America that this guy is on {Medicade} and that the American people are paying {fro} it!”
Still, a navigator replied, “I do understand your frustration, however I have no other options to offer.”
It has been established that Medicaid coverage provides substandard care. One such study cited by the report comes from the Manhattan Institute, when Avik Roy wrote in 2012, “Medicaid patients were almost twice as likely to die as those with private insurance; their hospital stays were 42 percent longer and cost 26 percent more.”
Another problem with Medicaid coverage is that most doctors refuse to even accept patients who have Medicaid coverage, because payments for reimbursements are too low. Yet another, is the lack of choice within Medicaid coverage, which does not give patients the option to get a second opinion if God-forbid one was to receive a cancer prognosis. And the list goes on and on.
John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis said, “One woman in Boston who was in Medicaid said she had to go through a list of 20 doctors before she found one who would see her. I asked if she was going through the Yellow Pages.” The woman told Goodman that she was just going through the list of doctors Medicaid coverage gave her to choose from.
“That tells you something about the standard of care on Medicaid,” Goodman said.
The CBO projects Medicaid spending will rise rapidly over the coming decade, which was a foundational argument for those who opposed the law. Why would lawmakers support a law that expands and builds upon already broken programs that needed reform before ObamaCare was added?
An aging population and rising costs per beneficiary will ensure Medicaid coverage will be even more substandard than it already is now in the future. The reports are flooding in around the country from those like the woman Goodman spoke with who was dealing with a very real, very scary doctor shortage.
It is unclear whether the administration’s motive was to increase dependence on the federal government, as seems to be the case with more than one program during the Obama administration, or if the forcing of willing and able paying Americans into Medicaid coverage is just another unforeseen side-effect of the mother of all central planning projects, ObamaCare.
