The uninsured rate

[ritaxis]

I don't want to take away from the success, such as it is, of the Affordable Care Act. But when they say that the uninsured rate has dropped this much or that much, it doesn't actually mean that the number of people who are getting medical care has risen this much or that much. Down here in the trenches it's still largely chaos. Many of us are nominally covered but aren't actually getting any actual health care covered due to network confusion and the difficulty of finding doctors and other practitioners who can be paid by our new insurance.

As for me, personally, that confusion has cost me at least five hundred dollars, if not seven hundred, as I followed through on medical care prescribed by a doctor who was in-network the day I signed up and who did not discover he was no longer in network until after I had had two visits, a raft of blood tests, and two months of prescriptions. Currently I no longer have a primary care doctor in network and I have another round of prescriptions due. I can renew them and pay for them without coverage (which is probably my best option), skip a month (which is not a viable option for at least two drugs), or I don't know what, because finding a new doctor will take a while.

Also: as an uninsured person who paid cash up front I had certain discounts I do not have as a nominally insured person.

A single payer system would not have done this to me. Just sayin'.