Where's my doctor

Over the recent past there has been a lot of attention paid to the sentence “if you like your plan you can keep it” which was a statement repeatedly made by President Obama which many are now just realizing was inaccurate.  However, something that has largely escaped scrutiny has been the second part of that promise which was “if you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor.” Speech to the AMA 2009.

Forbes and the Wall Street Journal have reported that doctors in ten states are receiving termination notices as part of a cost saving measure in which doctors and hospitals must accept a decrease in their fees.  The hardest hit group in this regard are providers who participate in the Medicare Advantage Plans Forbes, WSJ.

Not only is your doctor at risk of being cut for funding reasons, but because of the insurance plan debacle it is possible that your doctor will not be an in-network provider of your new plan.

Last month Kathleen Sebelius went on the Jon Stewart show and tried to convince the American people that the healthcare marketplace was revolutionary in that it provided a market where people could go and shop for plans and prices and check to see if their doctors and hospitals were in the plan that they want and went on to say that “you have never been able to do that before” at which time Jon Stewart questioned her on the point that people are not able to do that under the current system and Ms. Sebelius clearly replied that people would never know what was there Stewart & Sebelius. 

I visited the websites of Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Healthcare.gov.  Is it a surprise to anybody that I was able to do a doctor search from the home pages of Aetna and BCBS but not healthcare.gov.  It was surprising to me that there is no mention of doctors anywhere on the home page of healthcare.gov.  I also watched a video on the website touting the benefits of having insurance and the marketplace Healtcare Marketplace which again made no mention of comparing networks or finding your doctor. 

There are times that world and domestic events are relatively stable, no big news stories to be found.  In this case with the healthcare rollout fiasco there is so much that is being thrown at the people that is inaccurate that it is impossible for the press to keep up with every one of the inconsistencies. 

It is clearly not true that you can keep your plan if you were happy with it, the grandfather clause was always a misnomer because anyone who has ever had insurance knows that your plan changes every year.  It was also misleading to tell people and the AMA that their patient doctor relationships would not be terminated.  Provider networks are effected through changes within the insurance plans themselves, as such there is no guarantee that you can you can keep your doctor, even without doctors being dropped from plans because of funding.  Furthermore, this is not a revolutionary concept, not only because Flo is already doing it through Progressive in the auto insurance industry but because insurers have been providing plan, premium, benefit and in network provider information to potential customers, pretty much since they developed their own websites.