Health & Fitness
On Medicare? Don't Worry about Obamacare. Don't Even Think about Obamacare. Forget You Ever Heard the Word 'Obamacare.'
I noticed a recent concerted effort in the mainstream press -- including articles written by political appointees in the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) bureaucracy -- to tell us seniors not to worry about healthcare insurance exchanges and other aspects of Obamacare (see Note).
That's good advice but the articles seem to be written in such a way that the authors actually want us seniors to worry. The articles say things like:
- "Insurance exchanges are complicated but you seniors don't have to worry about them." (Insurance exchanges are just web sites, like Amazon. They've been around for 20 years or more.)
- "The health plans sold through the Marketplace.. are similar to what’s typically covered in an employer-provided plan." (That's true but they're also almost exactly the same as the plans provided by Medicare Part C and possibly the same as insurance provided by your former employer and they are similar to -- but not necessarily the same as -- what you get if you have a combination of Original Medicare Parts A and B, a Part D drug plan, and a private Medigap plan like Medex Bronze.)
- "People will be able to go to one website to learn about insurance plans available to them, check on their benefits and out-of-pocket costs and then comparison shop." (You can already do that for Medicare and have been able to do it for seven years.)
So all I can say in response to what appears to be an effort to confuse us is that if you are on Medicare, don't worry about Obamacare, don't even think about Obamacare, forget you ever heard the word 'Obamacare.' Basically -- for this year at least (Congress can change the Medicare law any time it wants and has done so dozens of times in the last 48 years) -- people on Medicare have no relation to Obamacare.
In fact, the next time someone breathlessly talks to you about an insurance exchange, tell them
"What's the big deal? I'm on Medicare and I've been using an insurance exchange since 2005. That's how we sign up for our Medicare Part C and/or Part D health plans."
(You can even add "My health insurance exchange works great" -- or not -- depending on how you feel about medicare.gov)
NOTE: I use the word Obamacare when I am referring to the subsidized insurance products that will be offered beginning in October 2013 to people not eligible for Medicare. I use the term Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act when I am referring to the law that was passed in 2010 that enabled this new insurance.
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