The Tennessean committed an act of journalism and actually looked into the claims of Emilie Lamb, a Tennessee woman who has become the “national posterchild” for the anti-Obamacare crowd, appearing in Americans For Prosperity ads and mentioned in an op-ed by that harpy Marsha Blackburn.
Like every other one of these stories, it doesn’t add up:
Her beef? The health coverage she had received for years — and liked — under a state program known as CoverTN ended last year because it was deemed substandard under the health care law. Now she pays seven times more for a plan she says is more than she needs.
Supporters of the law who have examined CoverTN say the coverage Lamb had under the state plan was the very kind of junk policy the health care law was meant to replace.
There were restrictions on the number of times she could see a doctor or specialist. Emergency room visits were limited. Financial help for prescriptions was capped. But the real danger of CoverTN, they said, was that it covered a maximum $25,000 in medical bills a year— an amount a moderate hospital stay could easily eat up.
Even BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, which administered the program for the state, warned consumers on its website that CoverTN benefits “are very limited compared to traditional insurance.”
[…]
Advocates for the health care law say Lamb was lucky to avoid financial ruin under her old plan, especially because of the long-term expenses associated with lupus.
And they said she could have opted for a much less expensive option that covers hospitalization — including a plan costing $159 per month — among the 37 plans offered on the federal HealthCare.gov health exchange serving Tennessee residents.
Basically, Lamb is an idiot. As I wrote last November,
If you liked insurance that is basically ripping you off then you’re a moron. You’re probably one of those people who thinks a Nigerian prince wants to send you a million bucks. Guess what, that’s a scam, too.
Okay, it’s not fair to say CoverTN was ripping people off but let’s remember who and what it was designed for: it was a program Gov. Bredesen created to cover all of those people who were uninsured because of pre-existing conditions and those who got kicked off TennCare, our state Medicaid program. It was,
[...] designed to offer stripped-down medical coverage to the uninsured at a steep discount.
Denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions is now against the law — remember, this is the part of the Affordable Care Act everybody likes — so you can see how an insurance program designed to cover a group of people who no longer exist might be a tad superfluous.
CoverTN was also created for the unemployed and self-employed — it was designed for portability. Again, this is a key part of the Affordable Care Act (and the part that the media completely missed when it erroneously reported the “Obamacare kills 2.5 million jobs” lie): with health insurance tied to your employment, people didn’t have the freedom to leave jobs, retire, stay home with the kids for a while, start a new enterprise, be self-employed, etc. etc. If you, your spouse or child had a health condition, you were trapped in your job by your need for health insurance. Under Obamacare this is no longer the case. As a self-employed person let me say: this is wonderful.
Also, CoverTN was created for low-income people who made too much money to be eligible for TennCare but not enough money to be able to afford traditional insurance. Emilie Lamb paid $52 a month, but that was just one-third of the actual premium’s cost: the rest was paid by employers ($50) and the state ($50). Seems like if Gov. Haslam would get off his ass and accept the federal help to expand Medicaid here, people like Lamb wouldn’t be complaining.
The entire Cover Tennessee plan will “sunset” in 2010, at which time it will be re-evaluated by the legislature.
It was going to go away anyway.
CoverTN was created as a stop-gap measure for a marketplace which no longer exists. People are no longer denied insurance for pre-existing conditions. The unemployed and self-employed no longer have limited options for obtaining health insurance. Low-income people — at least, those in states which don’t have recalcitrant Republican governors who’d rather hurt the poor than defy the Tea Party — have expanded state Medicaid programs to turn to.
I just can’t take Emilie Lamb’s complaints seriously.
