ObamaCare Cancelled This Mother’s Health Insurance, Then Forced Her Onto Medicaid

The Wall Street Journal this morning published an agonizing story from Nicole Hopkins about how her mother, Charlene, has been negatively affected by ObamaCare.

According to Hopkins, her mother was notified that her health care plan would be cancelled due to ObamaCare on December 31. The new option they offered her cost almost twice as much. Dismayed, she visited her state ObamaCare exchange, only to find that her ONLY option was to be dumped into the state’s Medicaid program!

Hopkins mother did not want Medicaid, and had refused it in favor of paying for her own healthcare in the past. “I think that we should be able to take care of ourselves and to earn enough money to pay for basics, and health insurance is one of them,” Charlene said. Under ObamaCare, however, state-run healthcare is the only option left for her – unless she wants to pay the law’s massive tax penalty next year.

It’s disappointing that not only has Obama broken his promise that you can keep your health plan if you like it, but that the only option his health care law offers for women like Charlene is to resign themselves to government welfare.

“Before ObamaCare, Medicaid was one option. Not the option. Before this, she had never been, in effect, ordered to take a handout,” Nicole wrote. “Now she has been forced to join the government-reliant poor, though she would prefer to contribute her two mites.”

From the Wall Street Journal:

The unaffordable ObamaCare-compliant plan that her insurer offered in a Sept. 26 letter is not what makes my mother’s story noteworthy. Countless individually insured Americans have received such letters; many are seeing more radical increases in premiums and deductibles.

But most of these people are still being offered the chance to choose what health-care insurance they will receive, or to opt out before they are automatically enrolled in a state program. Not so my mother, Charlene Hopkins, as I soon discovered when I called after seeing her Facebook post.

Since she couldn’t afford the new plan offered by her insurer, she told me she was eager to explore her new choices under the Affordable Care Act. Washington Healthplanfinder is one of the better health-exchange sites, and she was actually able to log on. She entered her personal and financial data. With efficiency uncommon to the ObamaCare process, the site quickly presented her with a health-care option.

That is not a typo: There was just one option—at the very affordable monthly rate of zero. The exchange had determined that my mother was not eligible to choose to pay for a plan, and so she was slated immediately for Medicaid. She couldn’t believe it was true and held off completing the application.

“How has it come to this?” she asked in one of our several talks over the past few weeks about what was happening. When she was a working mother and I was young, she easily carried health insurance for our whole family. “How have I fallen this far?”

…

The situation sounded absurd, so I asked her to walk me through her application on Washington Healthplanfinder to make sure she wasn’t missing anything. Sitting in New York with my computer, I logged onto the site under her name and entered the information my mother provided over the phone. I fully expected her to realize that she had forgotten some crucial piece of information, like a decimal point in her annual income. We checked and double-checked the information, but the only option still appeared to be Medicaid. She suggested clicking on “Apply for Coverage,” thinking that other options might appear.

Instead, almost mockingly, her “Eligibility Results” came back: “Congratulations, we received and reviewed your application and determined [you] will receive the health care coverage listed below: Washington Apple Health. You will receive a letter telling you which managed care plan you are enrolled with.” Washington Apple Health is the mawkish rebranding of Medicaid in Washington state.

The page lacked a cancel button or any way to opt out of Medicaid. It was done; she was enrolled, and there was nothing to do but click “Next” and then to sign out.

Of course, Medicaid is not a new option for my mother; she knew that she was poor enough to qualify for cost-free health care. It was a deliberate choice on her part to pay that monthly $276 out of her own pocket. Clearly she had judged that she received a personal benefit from not being on Medicaid.

“I just don’t expect anything positive out of getting free health care,” she said. “I don’t see why other people should have to pay for my care, whether it be through taxes or otherwise.” In paying for health insurance herself—she won’t accept help from her family, either—she was safeguarding her dignity and independence and her sense of being a fully functioning member of society.

Before ObamaCare, Medicaid was one option. Not the option. Before this, she had never been, in effect, ordered to take a handout. Now she has been forced to join the government-reliant poor, though she would prefer to contribute her two mites. The authorities behind “affordable care” had erased her right to calculate what she was willing to spend to preserve her dignity—to determine what she thinks is affordable.