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Erica's avatar

Let's keep in mind that Obama wanted to implement the Swiss model, which I used having lived there for four years and it works! BUT the republicans said NO way. Could he have been more forceful, definitely. But they've been trying to dismantle the ACA ever since and not because of what you said above, but because they all want us to give up and go away and die so they don't have to pay out. But I've also been saying for years that if our electeds, on either side of the aisle, wanted single payer health coverage, we would have had it years ago. You only need to look at NYS. It was introduced by Dick Gottfried in 1992 and Democracts have had all three branches of government for how long? And the state leaders refuse to bring it to a floor vote even though they tell us to our faces that they support it.

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Nella's avatar

Thanks for this helpful article. I had an eye-opening personal experience of the relationship between Dems and private health insurance as I fought hard against the egregious behavior of Blue Shield of California, which could have easily bankrupted me.

It's an only-in-America tale of being sick and having to spend a ton of time and energy strategizing and fighting to avoid financial ruin. I managed to get the help of a provider hospital system financial executive who served as a human shield between me and BS for 4 years. We're talking working hard to get all the authorizations in place to have care covered by an out-of-network specialist, only to then have the heart surgery, come home and see that BS broke their promise and said I should pay $388,000.

Ultimately, the fin exec had his legal team take BS to court on my behalf and on behalf of many other patients who'd been similarly abused by BS. A few months later, a BS VP sent me a letter saying that effective immediately, I was kicked out of my specialist's care. No chance to figure out where to go next or what to do. The whole experience was traumatizing and worsened my health.

So here's the tie in with the Dems.

I filed a complaint with our CA Dept of Managed Health Care, which is charged with "overseeing" health insurance companies. They clearly hadn't even read my complaint before spitting out a response that didn't even get the basic facts right.

I escalated and was met with gaslighting and with one agent, verbal abuse. So I reached out to the office of my CA State Assemblymember, Buffy Wicks. She'd helped Obama get the ACA passed and I'd viewed her as an ally.

It took staff 6 months to even read my letter, in which I asked them for help in holding BS accountable in some way, whether through the DMHC or another mechanism. That staff person was apologetic, promised to read it. And then stopped responding.

I reached out a few months later and another staff person said the legislative director would help. Great! He said he could maybe call the DMHC. Sometime. Never a commitment.

In the meantime, I looked into Open Secrets and noted the BS donations to Assemblymember Wicks.

I made it clear to the staff that I knew they were busy and that I wasn't the only constituent reaching out for help. I also shared that I really didn't want to connect those dots between the months of delay and inaction on my request for assistance and those BS campaign contributions. I mean, was I really bumping into the truth that state leaders receiving contributions just would not even touch a constituent insurance issue, let alone hold insurers accountable? Perhaps look into writing better laws to protect us?

They did nothing to set my mind at ease in the matter. Something was clearly off. So I wrote to the DMHC Director, who had the 2nd in command reach out to me.

He seemed serious and said he'd have his investigative team take on the matter to see if BS had broken any laws. It's been 9 months now. When I asked for an update a few months ago, he said it wasn't possible. So I have no idea what's happening there.

I wonder if you have experience with the DMHC, Wendell. I have no idea if the investigation will amount to anything, but in general, I haven't been very impressed by the whole set up. My experience with a prior complaint is that they don't tell you what the outcome of their investigation is, so it's hard to see what the point is of spending all those tax dollars.

Quite an eye-opening experience here in predominantly Democratic CA.

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