Obamacare Will Exclude Top Hospitals

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sloan-ketteringAmericans who are buying insurance plans over online exchanges, under what is known as Obamacare, will have limited access to some of the nation’s leading hospitals, including two world-renowned cancer centres.

Amid a drive by insurers to limit costs, the majority of insurance plans being sold on the new healthcare exchanges in New York, Texas, and California, for example, will not offer patients’ access to Memorial Sloan Kettering in Manhattan or MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, two top cancer centres, or Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, one of the top research and teaching hospitals in the country.

It could become another source of political controversy for the Obama administration next year, when the plans take effect. Frustrated consumers could then begin to realise what is not always evident when buying a product as complicated as healthcare insurance: that their new plans do not cover many facilities or doctors “in network”. In other words, the facilities and doctors are not among the list of approved providers in a certain plan.Experts say the move by insurers to limit consumers’ choices and steer them away from hospitals that are considered too expensive, or even “inefficient”, reflects the new competitive landscape in the insurance industry since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama’s 2010 healthcare law.

Under some US health insurance plans, consumers can elect to visit medical facilities that are “out of network”, but they would probably incur high out of pocket costs and may need referrals to prove that such care is medically necessary.

The development is worrying some hospital administrators who see the change as an unintended consequence of the ACA.

“We’re very concerned. [Insurers] know patients that are sick come to places like ours. What this is trying to do is redirect those patients elsewhere, but there is a reason why they come here. These patients need what it is that we are capable of providing,” says Thomas Priselac, president and chief executive officer of Cedars-Sinai Health System in California.

Read more at The Financial Times.

{Matzav.com Newscenter}


2 COMMENTS

  1. The problem is “top hospitals” overcharge like crazy for routine items. $25 to give a patient aspirin or acetaminophen. Huge overcharges for unnecessary and redundant testing.
    Those kind of top hospitals (though there is no established link between their “special care” and patient recovery/mortality) should be reserved for the rich; if you want to blow your hard-earned money on it, go for it. For MY money, using a qualified hospital and giving the extra cash to a needy tzedaka organization that supports almanos, yesomim and bnei Torah is a better move.

  2. visit medical facilities that are “out of network”, but they would probably incur high out of pocket costs and may need referrals to prove that such care is medically necessary.
    ===
    that is called cash
    alot of money
    this WILL hurt our community as we would not be able to access top doctors

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