More Schadenfreude In New York

This story in the New York Slimes (motto:All the news that fits our views) warmed the cockles of my heart.

Many in New York’s professional and cultural elite have long supported President Obama’s health care plan. But now, to their surprise, thousands of writers, opera singers, music teachers, photographers, doctors, lawyers and others are learning that their health insurance plans are being canceled and they may have to pay more to get comparable coverage, if they can find it.

We warned you booger eatin’ moh-rons. You wouldn’t listen to us and called us racists for being against Obummercare.

They are part of an unusual, informal health insurance system that has developed in New York, in which independent practitioners were able to get lower insurance rates through group plans, typically set up by their professional associations or chambers of commerce. That allowed them to avoid the sky-high rates in New York’s individual insurance market, historically among the most expensive in the country.

So what’s happening now?

But under the Affordable Care Act, they will be treated as individuals, responsible for their own insurance policies. For many of them, that is likely to mean they will no longer have access to a wide network of doctors and a range of plans tailored to their needs. And many of them are finding that if they want to keep their premiums from rising, they will have to accept higher deductible and co-pay costs or inferior coverage.

And have you noticed as we are hearing more and more stories like this, that the LSM is calling it the Affordable Care Act and not Obummercare? Wonder why that is? Could it be that it sucks and they’re trying to protect their boy?

“I couldn’t sleep because of it,” said Barbara Meinwald, a solo practitioner lawyer in Manhattan.

Poor baby! This is what you voted for and you’re getting it. Good and hard!

Ms. Meinwald, 61, has been paying $10,000 a year for her insurance through the New York City Bar. A broker told her that a new temporary plan with fewer doctors would cost $5,000 more, after factoring in the cost of her medications.

Ms. Meinwald also looked on the state’s health insurance exchange. But she said she found that those plans did not have a good choice of doctors, and that it was hard to even find out who the doctors were, and which hospitals were covered. “It’s like you’re blindfolded and you’re told that you have to buy something,” she said.

Yep! Once again, we told you this would happen but you just called us a bunch of racists.

The people affected include not just writers, artists, doctors and the like, but also independent tradespeople, like home builders or carpenters, who work on their own.

So now you care about working people? When did that start?

Some have received notices already; others, whose plans have not yet expired, will soon receive letters in the mail. It is unclear exactly how many New Yorkers are affected; according to state health officials, as many as 400,000 independent practitioners get health insurance through job-related group plans, but that number also includes people who receive coverage through their spouses’ employers.

It’s a train wreck just like the people with more than two functioning brain cells knew would happen. How do ya like Obumbler now, New York? This is what you voted for.

The predicament is similar to that of millions of Americans who discovered this fall that their existing policies were being canceled because of the Affordable Care Act. The crescendo of outrage led to Mr. Obama’s offer to restore their policies, though some states that have their own exchanges, like California and New York, have said they will not do so.

It led to Oblunder illegally offering to restore their policies. FIFY!

But while those policies, by and large, had been canceled because they did not meet the law’s requirements for minimum coverage, many of the New York policies being canceled meet and often exceed the standards, brokers say. The rationale for disqualifying those policies, said Larry Levitt, a health policy expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation, was to prevent associations from selling insurance to healthy members who are needed to keep the new health exchanges financially viable.

See Obeauzeau supporters, your hero is screwing you to make the exchanges work. He’s also stealing over $700 billion from Medicare, just like Mittens said and Oboner denied in the debates. He has to steal money from working programs to try to make his disaster work. Once again, we told you this would happen but you called us racists.

Siphoning those people, Mr. Levitt said, would leave the pool of health exchange customers “smaller and disproportionately sicker,” and would drive up rates.

Just like we told you but… Ah hell, you know the rest.

David Rubin, vice president of Teiget, the Entertainment Industry Group Insurance Trust, which had served as a broker for about 1,000 members of creative guilds, said a big complaint was that in New York City and much of the state, the new individual plans both on and off the exchange did not allow patients to go to doctors out of network. “All these people had these customized plans which are better than most of the things out there, and most of them are saving only a small amount of money,” Mr. Rubin said.

You know that prolly 95% of these people (prolly even more) voted for Obeavis. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! How do you like him now? We told you this would happen but you called us racists.

Roy Lyons, managing director of Marsh U.S. Consumer, an insurance brokerage, said he had heard complaints from physicians, lawyers, pharmacists and optometrists. “At first they think it’s the bar association making the decision or the insurance company doing it,” Mr. Lyons said. “We have to explain that this is the Affordable Care Act; that’s what was put into law. Once they understand, they’re less emotional, but they’re not happy with it.”

Wait! It’s Obummercare that’s doing this? Then I guess this is OK ’cause we support Obutthead so this must be for the greater good. What a bunch of booger eatin’ moh-rons!

Among those affected are members of the Authors Guild; the Advertising Photographers of America; the Suzuki Association of the Americas, a music teachers organization; the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators; the New York City Bar Association; and the New York County Medical Society. (One group, the Freelancers Union, negotiated a one-year exemption with the state.)

And you just know that all of those are liberal organizations except maybe the New York County Medical Society.

It is not lost on many of the professionals that they are exactly the sort of people — liberal, concerned with social justice — who supported the Obama health plan in the first place. Ms. Meinwald, the lawyer, said she was a lifelong Democrat who still supported better health care for all, but had she known what was in store for her, she would have voted for Mitt Romney.

Too late for that now. We told you … you know the rest.

It is an uncomfortable position for many members of the creative classes to be in.

“We are the Obama people,” said Camille Sweeney, a New York writer and member of the Authors Guild. Her insurance is being canceled, and she is dismayed that neither her pediatrician nor her general practitioner appears to be on the exchange plans. What to do has become a hot topic on Facebook and at dinner parties frequented by her fellow writers and artists.

“I’m for it,” she said. “But what is the reality of it?”

The reality is that it sucks. Unfortunately, you guys don’t live in the real world. You live in a fantasy land where we can get 100% of our power from wind, solar, and unicorn farts. Where liberal policies work. Where stupid actions have no consequences. Where you can give 50 million additional people health insurance without the cost going up. You have been slapped in the face by reality. You now have to face the consequences of Hope and Change. How’s that hopey changey stuff working out for ya?

Elections have consequences.

I love the smell of schadenfreude in the morning. It smells like vindication.

3 comments on “More Schadenfreude In New York

  1. The happy juice has just worn off and now they’re feeling the after-effects of the free colonoscopy they just got from Obuggercare.

  2. Now it’s time for the Obamabots to eat their liver and they don’t like the taste. They supported this abomination and applauded when the Progs rammed this ‘Reform’ down our throats. I am more than happy that it hurts when it gets rammed up their asses. They wanted to insure the un-insurable and break the laws of risk and probability, not knowing that the fine for breaking such laws was huge. Obamacare gets worse by the day and I love it. Stupid people should keep their hands off things they don’t understand, like actuarial tables.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *