Thought Leader??

OK. Let’s get to some other conversations for an MD, MBA, TL (thought leader) By the way, the answer about time space was nothing more than Star Trekish babble, but hey, it fooled you.

Today a patient asked me if I was taking Obamacare. I’ve heard this a lot and I think it speaks to the fact that we have been through such a thorough disinformation campaign that few us have a clue anymore. Obamacare (and unlike the President, I hate the name) is not an entity like food stamps to accept or not accept. It is little more than a process of purchasing insurance.

Healthcare.gov is a website that sells insurance. If you want to complain about anything, it should be the amount of government money that went into developing a vehicle for selling insurance. That’s a completely legitimate complaint. You can complain about the problems that the website had, but, if you have ever used a new piece of tech, there are ALWAYS issues. That’s why Gmail was beta tested for years. IOS 7 and Windows 8 were greeted with universal scorn. Standard tech. To expect the US government to do better than Apple and Microsoft did with their core products would be unlikely.

Now, if you have ever bought insurance, it is hell. My least favorite part of buying insurance was navigating the marketplace. Each company has about a hundred different group options. Your head can explode comparing them all. Healthcare.gov made it easier. It grouped policies into categories that could be easily compared. It made the unmanageable, manageable. You could choose a bronze, silver, gold, platinum and the policies would offer options that would be increasingly desirable. Just like the metals, the better metal was associated with a better policy.

So given that Obamacare represents a methodology for buying insurance, I will be accepting all of the Platinum policies and a few of the bronze policies. Same as I have been doing all along.