BRAVE. You hear that word a lot when people are sick. It's all about the fight, the survival instinct, the courage. But when Dr. Elizabeth D. McKinley's family and friends talk about bravery, it is not so much about the way Dr. McKinley, a 53-year-old internist from Cleveland, battled breast cancer for 17 years. It is about the courage she has shown in doing something so few of us are able to do: stop fighting. This spring, after Dr. McKinley's cancer found its way into her liver and lungs and the tissue surrounding her brain, she was told she had two options.
After they get the website fixed, then what? Keeping your doctors and hospitals may be the next vexing challenge for Americans in the new health plans created by President Barack Obama's law. Obama promised people could keep their doctors. But in many states the new plans appear to offer a narrow choice of hospitals and doctors. Overall, it's shaping up as less choice than what people get through Medicare or employer-based coverage. Also, it can get complicated tracking down which medical providers are in what plans.
States and insurers are already working to bail out President Barack Obama's health-care overhaul, anticipating the system's online insurance exchanges may not be ready by a critical December deadline. All of the alternatives have drawbacks. Insurance companies are hoping to bypass the troubled exchanges and directly enroll customers. While that strategy would ease access, it also might prevent consumers from shopping for the best deal, a cornerstone of Obamacare. States may extend special coverage for the chronically ill who are otherwise shut out of the market. That's if they can find the money.
Chicago's best known hospitals don't accept many of the health plans sold on the new insurance marketplace that's part of the nation's health care law, and consumer advocates are worried patients will get stuck with unexpected bills. It may turn into the next big challenge for the insurance system created by President Barack Obama's law. Obama promised Americans could keep their doctors. But experts say the new plans appear to offer a narrow choice of hospitals and doctors less choice than offered by Medicare or employer-based coverage.
Tilda Elias had reason to be optimistic when she opened the HealthCare.gov website on Monday, ready to help her first client of the week find health insurance. Technicians had made fixes to the online insurance exchange over the weekend. Even more promising, her client, Giovanna Romano, had managed to complete an online application at home with no problems. But after Ms. Romano logged in, the system made her reconfirm everything in her application, a process that dragged on for 40 minutes. Then came the screen message that tens of thousands of people shopping for insurance under President Obama's new health care law have come to hate: "Sorry, our system is temporarily down."
Buoyed by a report showing that health care spending has risen by the lowest rate ever recorded, White House officials said Wednesday a continuation of the trend could lead to more jobs and lower-than-expected costs. Reduced health care costs for employers could lead to 200,000 to 400,000 new jobs per year by the second half of the decade, said Jason Furman, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. "If just half the recent slowdown in spending can be sustained, health care spending a decade from now will be $1,400 per person lower," Furman said.