A Brooklyn woman whose health insurance was canceled under ObamaCare applauded the president’s turnaround allowing people to keep the policies they already have — but wonders what took him so long.
“Now I have 12 months to think about getting another plan,” said Heather Cross, a 45-year-old tutor from Williamsburg. The timing, however, left her distressed.
“We’re having discussions that we should have had before the law was passed. We all have been taken to school on this — the people who got dumped from their plans, the people who voted for the law, the media, the president.
“This should have been debated. This was a disaster from the beginning.”
The Post highlighted Cross’ dilemma last month. She pays $568 a month for coverage under a “sole proprietor” plan underwritten by Oxford Health.
On the same day ObamaCare kicked in last month, Oxford sent her a letter saying it was canceling her current policy because it didn’t comply with the new Affordable Care Act.
Cross said she felt blindsided because Obama promised that anyone who liked their current plan could keep it.
When she went to the ObamaCare health exchange for a comparable plan, she learned it would cost $818 a month.
Since she earns about $90,000 a year, Cross’ income was too high to qualify for the federal subsidies that top out at $45,960 for a single person. She was livid.
Cross said with the Web-site snafus hampering the rollout of ObamaCare, she held off of purchasing a new policy.
She’s glad she did. “I waited to see if there were going to be any changes made before going to the trouble of getting a new policy,” she recalled.
Even so, Cross still has other concerns about the law going forward. She’s worried about whether her preferred doctors or hospital will be included in any new insurance plan.
There’s also no guarantee that Oxford will offer the same coverage she had before. Insurers have the option to re-up canceled policies or not. Obama’s announcement is too little, too late for other folks who were told they needed to get new policies.
“I believed my insurance letter and applied for a new plan because I was scared,” said Courtney Cohen, 35, who owns a PR firm in Washington, DC.
“I’ve already been told once that it [my current policy] was junk. Is it suddenly not junk now? And I’m sorry but for $189.50 a month and coverage for all my meds, I hardly see how that was junk to begin with,” she said.