Let me help Rick Moran out a little bit, because he seems confused about what Lori Gottlieb claimed and how I concluded that she is a liar. Let’s go very slow. Here is Ms. Gottlieb’s opening:
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…
What can we learn from this?
She talked to a representative of Anthem Blue Cross who (she claims) provided her the information she relied upon for her column. She was told that her old plan was cancelled because it was not compliant with the Affordable Care Act‘s requirements for minimal coverage. She was told that she would have to pay $5,400 more annually for a compliant policy than she had been paying for a non-compliant policy.
Mr. Moran raises some questions about my analysis:
What if she doesn’t want the Bronze Plan? What if her insurance company was being accurate when she asked how much a similar plan as the one that was cancelled would cost on the exchanges (Silver or Gold)? What reason would the insurance company have in lying to her when, if she chose, she could go to the website and find out herself?
We don’t know.
Here’s my response:
1. She told us how much it would cost her to buy a compliant plan, not an equivalent plan. They are no equivalent plans because her old shitty policy was so horrible that it is now illegal to offer people such crap. If she wants something better than a bronze plan, that’s wonderful, but no one is forcing her to pay more than necessary. And she has no business comparing the cost of a Silver or Gold plan to the cost of a plan that was so bad that it is now banned. In other words, the bronze plan is better than what she was getting in terms of costs and basic protections, although she may have legitimate beefs about doctors who are now out-of-network. Regardless, as we shall see, even with a Gold plan, she’d still be a liar.
2. Using the assumption that Ms. Gottlieb has two children, I discovered she could buy the L.A. Care Covered Bronze 60 plan for $426/mo or $5,112/yr. I understand now that she only has one child. Here are the quotes I am getting today from the California exchange for a 46 year old woman with one dependent child living in Los Angeles County with an income of $80,000:
Bronze: L.A. Care Covered Bronze 60: $328/mo, $3,936/yr
Silver: Health Net Silver 70: $408/mo, $4,896/yr
Gold: Health Net Gold 80: $461/mo, $5,532/yr
Silver: Health Net Platinum 90: $520/mo, $6,240/yr
Obviously, if your Gold policy only costs $5,532/yr, it cannot possibly be $5,400 more expensive than your old plan. It appears that she is quoting the price for a gold plan but reporting it as the size of the increase in the price.
3. Maybe some representative of Anthem Blue Cross actually told her that she’d have to spend over $5,000 more for a policy. Maybe they were trying to rip her off. Let’s have the police investigate that. But it’s more likely that Ms. Gottlieb is just a big fat liar.
