WASHINGTON — A feisty Upper East Side ophthalmologist didn’t take any guff from lawmakers Thursday when she gave congressional testimony about the ill effects of ObamaCare.
Dr. Patricia McLaughlin, whose ObamaCare woes were first highlighted in The Post, gave a House committee a simple prescription for the defective health care law: “Fix it!”
But Democratic lawmakers pounced on her for relating how she got hit with an ObamaCare “double whammy.”
McLaughlin told the House Oversight Committee, which invited her to testify after reading The Post article, how she had lost the group health plan for her four-person office.
Then, Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield dropped her from its provider network, forcing her patients using that insurance to go elsewhere or pay out of pocket, she said.
Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.) questioned whether McLaughlin was dumped from the network because her “credentials” weren’t as good as other doctors’.
“You haven’t made the comparison?” he demanded to know.
“That’s not what this is about,” she shot back. “It’s clearly about money.”
Cartwright said she should have compared her treatment costs to those of other doctors. “Clearly, someone made the comparison,” he said.
“Maybe that’s for you to find out?” retorted McLaughlin, provoking chuckles.
After the hearing, she said the Democrats were “a little harder on me than the others [testifying].”
She balked at Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.) calling the hearing a “pony show.”
“That really hurt me to the core,” she said. “Because I certainly was not here to put on any show . . . This was a nonpartisan participation on my part.”
Still, she said that her trip to Capitol Hill was worthwhile because she spoke “from my heart” for the patients.
“I feel that I am their advocate now. I have the pleasure of coming down here and the honor,” said McLaughlin. “I just hope that I can make this better for all parties concerned.”