Originally Posted by
Headshot
Hmmm. I see what you're saying but don't really believe it. Can you provide a link or something to verify this?
I can't provide a link, but I'm telling you that's how it works.
When you shop for an individual plan, you do so based upon deductible, coinsurance percentage, ER co-pays, and other benefits. I have a cheaper plan because I chose a $5600 deductible and 25% coinsurance.
There is no option of, "I'd like to pay more money and have more doctors accept my plan."
In fact, it would be very difficult to offer this because
the doctors ultimately choose which plans to accept. So they can't sell you a plan with the promise that it will be accepted by more doctors, only to have doctors reject it anyway.
Now, yes, they could pay the doctors more on the more expensive individual plans, and pretty safely assume that overall it would result in wider coverage, but they would run into tons of headaches from people who buy the more expensive plans expecting their doctors of choice to take it, only to find out that they don't.
I have heard that it does vary from company to company, as some individual plans pay the doctors better than others, but this is a universal problem right now.
Some doctors are being nice about it and letting existing patients stay (and just accepting the cut rates), but most are kicking these individual plans to the curb completely.
You might say the solution is to simply raise health insurance rates to what employers pay -- like $900/month, or whatever. But that would be a huge burden upon people buying individual insurance, and a gigantic departure from what they were promised by Obama. I think they will scrap Obamacare before something like that happens, because it would cause a major political revolt and the Democrats would get clobbered if something like this happened.
Incidentally, I am surprised there hasn't been more public discussion of this matter, especially near midterm election time.