Americans still waiting for basic answers about Obamacare, now just two weeks away

With the opening of Obamacare insurance exchanges just two weeks away, people who have no choice but to enter the Obamacare market are facing uncertainties over their prescription medications. For some people, the issue could be a matter of life and death.

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LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Prescription drugs can cost hundreds, even thousands of dollars per month. For many people with chronic or life-threatening conditions, these drugs aren't a matter of choice.

Obamacare wasn't designed to make insurance cheap. It was designed to make it affordable, which is often confused with cheap. The way Obamacare makes insurance affordable is by making costs predictable.

Consider expensive things we buy. Houses aren't cheap, but they are affordable because the mortgage payments are predictable. By establishing standard plans with fixed premiums and deductibles, Obamacare makes insurance costs predictable so that families can budget and thereby afford medical care.

Unfortunately, even in this, Obamacare is a spectacular failure. With state left to set up their own exchanges and politicians meddling at every level, patients are receiving varying degrees of coverage in different states. For example, Oregon will cover at least 97 percent of all the different drugs that patients may need. Others, such as California will cover somewhere between 54 to 84 percent.

Some of the most expensive drugs are in limbo with patients reliant on them unsure if the state exchanges will cover them.

What this means is that some people forced into Obamacare may not get the drugs they need to maintain their health because their drugs may no longer be covered. Obamacare works around this by allowing patients to obtain an exception if they can show their medication is "medically necessary." Who determines this? A bureaucrat, of course.

More importantly, the apply for an exemption requires paperwork, phone calls, possibly visits, and above all, time. For some patients, time is a luxury they do not have.

So while a subset of the population pays their Obamacare-mandated premiums, they will also be waiting for their prescription drug coverage to kick in. As they wait, they will have to decide between the rent or mortgage payment, bankruptcy, or their medication.

Obamacare may go off without a hitch for the average American whose only pain will be the added expense of a few hundred dollars. However, many people will struggle with the loss of their company-provided insurance, the cutback in working hours, or fall through gaps in coverage created by Obamacare. Not everyone will be better off.

Once everyone starts buying mandated insurance, there is also a great likelihood that costs will slowly increase as profiteers realize they can slowly squeeze the masses to pay more and more for their federally-mandated coverage.

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