I just finished a very interesting story in the Wall Street Journal relating to health care for HIV-positive and AIDS patients. With previously-available health insurance, people with AIDS pretty much had access to whichever doctors and facilities they needed for their treatment, and all the medicines legitimately prescribed by their doctors (with only a simple per-Rx copay).
Under the new ObamaCare schemes, those insurance companies that agree to offer policies on the state-run and Federal “exchanges” are changing the terms of their policies to reflect the new mandates placed upon them under the law. Insurance companies are not allowed to turn away sick people, and are also prevented from charging them more than healthier people. So, in order to be able to stay in business, health insurance companies are restricting their networks of doctors and hospitals, and instituting high co-insurance for the drugs AIDS patients need to stay alive. They are dividing the available drugs into “tiers”, with the most expensive ones requiring the patient to pay up to 50% of the cost, and some newer classes of drugs not covered at all. (Oh, and those drug makers who offer low-income patients “drug cards” to help them cover the cost of their medicine? Specifically not allowed under ObamaCare).
Well, you can predict that the very powerful AIDS lobby has strongly objected to this “discriminatory” treatment by those evil insurance companies, and they have asked HHS to investigate the companies for illegal activity. In general, the gay community has been VERY supportive of OTL and his “Affordable Care Act” (scare quotes intended), and it is now coming back to bite them. Too many stories to cite here are coming out about the “replacement” plans with premiums doubling and deductibles tripling, causing sticker-shock. Now one of the Liberals’ pet protected classes is finding out that they are not immune from the adverse effects of centrally-planned-and-controlled health care.
It will be interesting to see whether their screams will lead to HHS mandating that insurance companies cover, and pay for, ALL available AIDS drugs on the exchange plans, which will lead to their bankruptcies even sooner (single-payer, here we come).
