Sue Klinkhamer, a former staffer of ex-Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.), spent years of her career defending the Affordable Care Act. After receiving a costly letter from her insurance carrier, however, she now has seen firsthand that Obamacare is more like the ‘Available Care Act’ — and she let her former boss know about it.
Klinkhamer wrote Foster and Democratic colleagues to detail her experience in the insurance market after losing her job and policy in the 2010 Republican wave. The plan she purchased on the individual market three years ago initially was $225 a month with a $2,500 deductible, and its cost went up gradually into this September. With the implementation of Obamacare, however, she experienced some serious sticker shock via a letter she received from Blue Cross Blue Shield, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
“Blue Cross stated my current coverage would expire on Dec. 31, and here are my options: I can have a plan with similar benefits for $647.12 [or] I can have a plan with similar [but higher] pricing for $322.32 but with a $6,500 deductible,” Klinkhamer wrote Foster, according to the Sun-Times. “Blue Cross also tells me that if I don’t pick one of the options, they will just assume I want the one for $647. … Someone please tell me why my premium in January will be $356 more than in December?”
Klinkhamer’s circumstances mirror those of many policyholders across the country. Scores of consumers are losing their current plans and seeing hiked prices, and the White House has tried to pivot to pinning this on Obamacare’s requirement that individuals possess insurance better than what the law would deem ‘substandard’. But despite continuing to “believe in health care for all,” Klinkhamer is frustrated with the cost.
“[I] still defended Obamacare because it would make health care available to everyone at, what I assumed, would be an affordable price,” she wrote of her stance on the law even after her boss was voted out of office. “I have now learned that I was wrong. Very wrong.”
(h/t Byron York)
