I hate to have to keep doing this, but Lori Gottlieb is complaining about ObamaCare in the pages of the New York Times. She claims that her health insurance carrier dropped her coverage and that she will have to pay $5,400 more annually than she was paying in order to get a new policy. From the article, I learned that she is 46 years old, a single mom, and a self-employed psychotherapist.
To try to get an idea of how much she will need to pay for insurance, I had to make a few assumptions. I assumed that she lives in Los Angeles County (since she used a Los Angeles byline), although she might not. And I don’t know how many children she has, so I gave her two. Psychotherapists generally make a good living, but Ms. Gottlieb suggested that she narrowly exceeded the cut-off to be eligible for a subsidy. The cut-off for a family of three is $76,360 so I decided to be generous and assume she makes $80,000 a year. Using the Covered California shop and compare tool, the cheapest Bronze plan Ms. Gottlieb is eligible for will cost $426/mo (L.A. Care Covered Bronze 60). That’s an annual cost of $5,112. How does that square with this claim?
THE Anthem Blue Cross representative who answered my call told me that there was a silver lining in the cancellation of my individual P.P.O. policy and the $5,400 annual increase that I would have to pay for the Affordable Care Act-compliant option: now if I have Stage 4 cancer or need a sex-change operation, I’d be covered regardless of pre-existing conditions.
Unless her old plan actually paid her $288 a year rather than charging her anything, it is impossible that she is facing a rate hike of $5,400. She’s either misinformed or the worst kind of liar.
No slight tweak in my assumptions (about her income, number of children, or county of residence) could come close to making her claim true.
