Hate Obama, Love Obamacare
By Steven Brill, TIME
I don't think Obamacare will help us. I don't want anything to do with it," Stephanie Recchi told me a week after the launch of HealthCare.gov on Oct. 1. "I hear a lot of bad things about it--that it doesn't cover pre-existing conditions and it's too expensive," she added, referring to what she said were "television ads and some politicians talking on the news. Just a lot of talk that this is a bad law."
Recchi's interest in health insurance is anything but casual. Those who read TIME's special report in March on health care costs ("Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us") may recall that when Stephanie's husband Sean, then 42, was diagnosed with cancer a year earlier, the couple--who together were drawing about $3,500 a month from the small business they had just started in Lancaster, Ohio--had to borrow from her mother and max out their credit cards to try to save him.
MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston had told Stephanie that their insurance (for which they paid $469 a month) was virtually worthless. So the hospital demanded $83,900, in advance, just to develop a treatment plan for Sean and cover his first $13,702 transfusion, along with simple items like gauze pads at $77 per box and routine lab tests for which he was billed tens of thousands of dollars.
As I reported, Stephanie recalled that her husband was "sweating and shaking with chills and pains. He had a large mass in his chest that was ... growing. He was panicked." Nonetheless, Sean was held in a reception area and kept from seeing a doctor for about 90 minutes until the hospital confirmed that the Recchis' check had cleared.
(More here.)
I don't think Obamacare will help us. I don't want anything to do with it," Stephanie Recchi told me a week after the launch of HealthCare.gov on Oct. 1. "I hear a lot of bad things about it--that it doesn't cover pre-existing conditions and it's too expensive," she added, referring to what she said were "television ads and some politicians talking on the news. Just a lot of talk that this is a bad law."
Recchi's interest in health insurance is anything but casual. Those who read TIME's special report in March on health care costs ("Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us") may recall that when Stephanie's husband Sean, then 42, was diagnosed with cancer a year earlier, the couple--who together were drawing about $3,500 a month from the small business they had just started in Lancaster, Ohio--had to borrow from her mother and max out their credit cards to try to save him.
MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston had told Stephanie that their insurance (for which they paid $469 a month) was virtually worthless. So the hospital demanded $83,900, in advance, just to develop a treatment plan for Sean and cover his first $13,702 transfusion, along with simple items like gauze pads at $77 per box and routine lab tests for which he was billed tens of thousands of dollars.
As I reported, Stephanie recalled that her husband was "sweating and shaking with chills and pains. He had a large mass in his chest that was ... growing. He was panicked." Nonetheless, Sean was held in a reception area and kept from seeing a doctor for about 90 minutes until the hospital confirmed that the Recchis' check had cleared.
(More here.)
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