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The Goodman Institute Health Blog

The Worst of Obamacare

Posted on April 8, 2022 by John C. Goodman

Ever since Obamacare became law, my colleagues and I have been writing about a race to the bottom in the exchanges – where health plans try to attract the healthy and avoid the sick. The result: people with serious health problems are being denied access to the doctors and hospitals they desperately need.

Most of the evidence of harm to patients comes from newspaper accounts and word of mouth. The reason: Congress has never done its own investigation or held hearings on the problem. Both parties are guilty.

However, when Democrats held a hearing the other day on Single Payer Health Insurance, the Republicans produced a witness with a tragic story. His daughter has a rare form of cancer and in the six-week open enrollment period the family found only one health plan in the exchange that had the clinic she needed in its network. However, after open enrollment ended, the plan removed that clinic from its network – leaving the child without access to the very doctors she most needed for her care.

Here is my interview with Christopher Briggs, the father.

And here is his congressional testimony.

2 thoughts on “The Worst of Obamacare”

  1. Devon Herrick says:
    April 8, 2022 at 2:34 pm

    Obamacare took away the Briggs family’s good health plan, just like it took away my wife’s company plan. In return, Chris and his family got an inferior Obamacare plan that was expensive with fewer benefits and less choice of doctors and hospitals. Because insurers have no other way to charge for risk, Obamacare plans in the marketplace don’t want Chris and his family in their risk pools. They will lose money. The race to the bottom, where Obamacare insurers have narrow networks that exclude the best doctors and the best hospitals, is a rationing technique.

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  2. Pingback: Obamacare: Promises Made, Promises Broken – OpEd - Yerepouni Daily News

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For many years, our health care blog was the only free enterprise health policy blog on the internet. Then, when the NCPA closed its doors, the health blog stopped as well.

During this five-year hiatus no one else has come forward to claim the space. So, my colleagues and I have decided to restart the blog in connection with the Goodman Institute. We invite you and others to use this forum to share your views.

John C. Goodman,

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