Screw You, Mickey Kaus
By Ann Coulter
AnnCoulter.com
I've been thrown off my health insurance --
THANKS, OBAMACARE! -- and have spent hours and
hours over the past month trying to figure out
my options now that the Democrats have made my
old plan, which I liked, "illegal." (I prefer to
think of my plan as "undocumented.")
Whom do I bill for the hours of work Obamacare
forced me to perform? How about you, Mickey?
You're the smartest living liberal (faint
praise), and you assured us that Obamacare was
going to be fantastic.
By now, Obama has issued "waivers" from
Obamacare to about 99 percent of the country.
(Perhaps you've heard, there's a big midterm
election this year.) As one of the few Americans
not granted a waiver, I'm here to tell you: You
have no idea what's coming, America.
I thought I had figured out the best plan for me
a month ago after having doctors and hospital
administrators look at the packets of material I
was sent by my old insurance company -- the same
mailing that informed me my old plan was
"illegal" under Obamacare.
But when I checked online recently, I discovered
the premier plan -- the "platinum,"
low-deductible, astronomically expensive plan
that might be accepted by an English-speaking
doctor who didn't attend medical school in a
Hawaiian shirt and board shorts -- does not
include treatment at any decent hospitals.
That's sort of unfortunate because THAT'S THE
ONLY REASON I WANT INSURANCE! That's the only
reason any sane homo sapien wants health
insurance: to cover health care costs in the
event of some catastrophic illness or accident
-- not to pay for Mickey Kaus' allergy
appointments. But my only options under the
blue-chip plan were hospitals that also do shoe
repair.
I called Blue Cross directly to ask if its most
expensive insurance plan covered the only
hospital I'd ever go to in an emergency. Since
that's all I wanted to know, that's what I
asked. (I like to get to the point that way.)
But -- as happens whenever you try to ascertain
the most basic information about insurance under
Obamacare -- the Blue Cross representative began
hammering me with a battery of questions about
myself.
First my name. (Does that make a difference to
what hospitals its plans cover?) Then my phone
number. By the time he got to my address, I
said, CAN YOU PLEASE JUST TELL ME IF ANY OF YOUR
PLANS COVER XYZ HOSPITAL? I DON'T EVEN KNOW IF I
WANT TO SIGN UP WITH YOU!
Finally, he admitted that Blue Cross' most
expensive individual insurance plan does not
cover treatment at the hospitals I named. Their
doctors are "out of network" (and the person who
designed this plan is "out of his mind").
This was the rest of the conversation, verbatim:
ME: None of your plans cover out-of-network
doctors?
BLUE CROSS: No.
ME: Why is it called "Premier Guided Access
WITH OUT-OF-NETWORK PLAN"?
BLUE CROSS: Where did you see that?
ME: On Blue Cross' own material describing
its plans.
BLUE CROSS: Oh. I don't know why it's called
that.
ME: None of your plans cover (the good
hospital)?
BLUE CROSS: No.
ME: I don't know who you are, but I have a
very specific set of skills that will help me
find you. And when I find you, I am going to
kill you. (Click.)
True conversation. Except the last sentence.
That was my fantasy.
I decided to approach it from the opposite
direction and called one of the nation's leading
hospitals to ask which plans it accepted. The
woman listed a series of plans, but she couldn't
tell me if I was eligible for any of them. For
that, she said, I'd have to go to the Obamacare
website.
Does Obamacare cover suicide?
I went to "healthcare.gov" and -- I guess I had
heard this, but had blocked it from my memory
like a rape victim unable to remember her attack
-- you can't even peek at the available plans
until you've given the government reams of
personal information about yourself.
How about they let me look at the merchandise
first?
Inasmuch as the cost of health insurance under
Obamacare is so high that it will generally make
more sense just to pay for your own catastrophic
health emergencies, I was not interested in
telling Kathleen Sebelius everything about me in
order to have the privilege of glancing at the
government's crappy plans.
But that's the only choice. As the Obamacare
website directs:
(1) Create an account. (Name, password.)
(2) Tell us about yourself and your family.
(Every single thing.)
(3) Choose a health insurance plan. (That's
where you finally get to see the plans.)
I wonder if other consumer-oriented businesses
will start demanding names, addresses, passwords
and phone numbers before the customer is allowed
to browse the merchandise. Maybe Williams-Sonoma
could pick up a few sales tricks from Ezekiel
Emanuel! Oh, you'd like to see the bronze
muffin tin? Sure, but first I'll need your
Social Security number, date of birth and
mother's maiden name. Sign here, here and here.
The main point of the Obamacare website is to
encourage people other than me to get a
government subsidy. There's also a section
helping you register to vote. You just can't see
the insurance plans. (Guess which one you need a
government ID for?)
With zero help from the Obamacare website, I
eventually figured out that there was one lone
insurance plan that would cover treatment at a
reputable hospital. The downside is, no doctors
take it.
So my only two health insurance options -- and
yours, too, as soon as the waivers expire,
America! -- are: (1) a plan that no doctors
take; or (2) a plan that no hospitals take. You
either pay for all your doctor visits and tests
yourself, or you pay for your cancer treatment
yourself. And you pay through the nose in either
case.
That's not insurance! It's a huge transfer of
wealth from people who work for a living to
those who don't, accomplished by forcing the
workers to buy insurance that's not insurance.
Obamacare has made actual health insurance
"illegal."
It's not "insurance" when what I want to insure
against isn't covered, but paying for other
people's health care needs -- defined broadly --
is mandatory.
It's as if you wanted to buy a car, so you paid
for a Toyota -- but then all you got was a
10-speed bike, with the rest of your purchase
price going to buy cars, bikes and helmets for
other people.
Or, more precisely, it would be like having the
option of car insurance that covers either
collisions or liability, but not both. Your car
insurance premium would be gargantuan, because
most of it would go to buy insurance, gas and
air fresheners for other people in the plan.
If you have employer-provided health care, you
may not have to make the 400 phone calls I had
to, but the result will be the same: You're not
getting what is commonly known as "insurance."
You're getting a massive bill to pay for other
people's chiropractors, marriage counselors,
birth control pills, smoking cessation programs,
"preventive care" appointments and pre-existing
conditions.
Health insurance has been outlawed, replaced
with a welfare program that has been renamed
"insurance."
When Matt Drudge decided he'd rather pay for his
own health care, liberals hysterically denounced
him for not buying an Obamacare
transfer-the-wealth, fake "insurance" plan. It
used to be shameful to be a public charge. Now
it's shameful to pay for yourself.
And it's shameful to work for yourself. The
self-employed are currently the only Americans
subjected to Obamacare. (In a way, it's lucky
for the Democrats that there aren't enough of us
to hurt them in this year's midterm elections!)
But we're the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.
You may have an employer-provided plan now, but
the waivers can't go on forever. If you live in
America, your health insurance is going to
disappear, too.
The government simply cannot force all insurance
companies to give subsidized health care to a
third of the country, to ignore the pre-existing
health conditions of its customers, to pay for
every little thing tangentially related to
health -- like smoking cessation programs,
marital counseling and pediatric dental care --
and also expect them to cover your cancer
treatment.
It doesn't matter if you've been paying for
insurance your whole adult life. That policy is
now "illegal." Put your hands in the air,
nice and easy, and step away from the policy ...
You 99-percenters still unaffected by Obamacare
will blithely go to the polls this November and
vote on some teeny-tiny issue, completely
unaware of the total destruction of health
insurance in America. The waivers have worked.
Now we'll have to wait 40 years for a future
Mickey Kaus to come along and expose the
disastrous consequences of this horrendous
government program, just like the real Mickey
Kaus did with welfare. But for now, I say: Screw
you, Mickey Kaus.
COPYRIGHT 2014 ANN COULTER