(Part 1 of ?): What and Why?
The What. Documentation of one family’s experience with, according to your personal preference, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare. I will refer to both the legislation and the resulting program as the ACA.
The Why (Short Version). Because my experience with the ACA has been entirely negative and I have exhausted all of the legislative and regulatory avenues available for redress (or more accurately, for just getting someone to at least pretend that they actually care). It is clear that I am but a gnat on a beast that cares not. Since direct communication has been met with disdain, I am left to either disappear or seek an alternative approach. This is the least unappealing of the remaining available options. Based on my experiences to date, I expect to influence nothing. However, I don’t want any of my representatives to have the ability to plausibly deny knowledge of what is happening “out here” in the real world. Therefore, I will document my experience here. The numbers presented are 100 percent accurate and can be verified through available records. Any opinions, of course, are my own. Unfortunately, it will take some effort to get it all into this format, so I will try to break it up into installments that I will post as I find the time.
Background Material. I am a self‑employed engineer with no employees. I am required to buy insurance through the Maryland state insurance exchange (www.marylandhealthconnection.gov). I will refer to this as the Maryland Marketplace or ACA Marketplace. My family consists of myself (age 57 at the time of this writing), my wife (age 58), and one grandson (age 4). Although my wife and I did not plan to be “parents” again, we must play the cards as they are dealt and we, therefore, raise our grandson as our fourth child. Our first three children are all over the age of 26. By preference, I would continue to labor in obscurity – staying out of your affairs and expecting equivalent reciprocation. I have neither the time nor desire to document this saga, yet, here I am.
Past Efforts. I have written several missives to those that purport to represent my (and your) interests and have received either nothing or nothing but rhetoric in response. Of the responses I did receive, I will be charitable and assume that the respondent really didn’t consider my arguments, otherwise I would be forced to assume a deliberate skewing of the truth. Bottom line, these folks just don’t care. I am not even a thorn in their side, they simply dismiss with an utter lack of consideration that I could not imagine bringing into my own business dealings. If I treated my clients the way they treat me, I’d not have a business to run. I am out of private options. I considered reaching out to the traditional press as that is probably the surest way to get those in the public eye to weigh in with an actual opinion on a real issue, but opted against that approach for three main reasons. First, the facts I will present are out there for anyone to see and the traditional press has shown no interest in treating the associated issues with any more seriousness than those who ignore my letters. Second, the issues do not lend themselves to brief one or two sentence type reporting and I was certain that whatever space the traditional press might offer (if any) would be nowhere near sufficient to expound in full. Third, despite what some will immediately assume, I have no political axe to grind. I have never registered with any political party. I have been a registered independent since the age of 18, long before being independent was “fashionable.” I think for myself. I am not here to rail either for or against health care as an issue. Neither the old or new systems are well or equitably designed. Quite frankly, both suffer from many of the same problems. The only major difference from my perspective is how much money is at stake and where it comes from. Neither the repeal demagogues nor the ACA Pollyannas offer a solution. What is clear is that in terms of personal affect, my family is in a much worse place under the ACA. Of course there people who are ACA “winners,” but there are at least as many ACA “losers” paying the freight.
I debated long and hard before deciding to undertake this effort. Would anyone care? Would it matter? Quite frankly, I don’t know. What I do know is that after spending way too many hours assembling and transmitting data and suggestions via a series of detailed correspondence, I received a reply from the White House that states (after four paragraphs of rhetoric that demonstrate only that the substance of my original letter was not even read):
“The bottom line is that we are implementing the Affordable Care Act, not repealing it. I’ll work with anybody to improve the law, and I’ll listen to good ideas. But for the father watching his daughter receive much‑needed cancer treatment or the senior citizen saving on prescription drug costs, we can’t go back to the way things used to be. This law is helping people, and it’s here to stay.”
This single paragraph overcame inertia and I decided to post. I never asked for the repeal of anything. My letter(s) included serious suggestions for improving the law. I guess they were not sufficiently “good ideas” to merit an actual discussion. I don’t begrudge anyone their health insurance, but someone is footing the bill and those people surely deserve some respect as well. Personally, I am now the father in a family with no health insurance, ACA casualties if you will. I know there are others like us and our stories need to be part of this program. I (or more accurately we) won’t be swept under the rug.
What’s to Come. What I hope to present is a detailed review of my experience with the ACA. I don’t expect to influence your opinion one way or the other. I am here simply to present the impacts of the ACA as they affect one family. Sure, I’ll offer some editorial‑type thoughts when I think they are suggestive of a better approach, but I’m not here to add to the rhetoric. There’s enough of that without me. I simply want to ensure that not one of my elected and appointed representatives can ever hide behind a “we didn’t know” argument. If they want to embrace the impacts as a necessary effect of expanding healthcare then embrace away, but do so in the light for all to see. I thus become a reluctant documentarian. Maybe no one will ever read this. Regardless, the information is now available should anyone care.
Current Health Insurance Status. Uninsured as of January 1, 2015. We have gone from being responsible card carrying insureds to ACA scofflaws. Prior to running my own business, I carried insurance through my employer(s). After going into business for myself (on January 1, 2003), I purchased insurance for my family on the open individual consumer market (yes, an open market existed long before the ACA) for 12 straight years. That ended when our health insurance policy was cancelled (effective at the end of 2014) as a non‑grandfathered plan under the provisions of the ACA. We reside in Maryland, a state that elected not to allow such plans to continue in force through 2016, as is allowed under one of the various “fixes” implemented when it became apparent that the “you can keep ‘em if you like ‘em” health plans were actually going to be cancelled under the ACA. While “we” in another state could still be covered under our old plan, “we” in our state of residence cannot. So why don’t I just buy health insurance through the ACA Marketplace instead? Thus, we come to core of the issue. I continue with that discussion in Part 2.
Posted May 8, 2016Questions or comments can be sent to aca@meszler.com