Obamacare Colonoscopy Confusion

WASHINGTON (AP) — The new health law requires that most insurance plans cover all costs for preventive care, including colon cancer screening.

But it didn't turn out to be that simple.

Many patients ended up with a bill when the doctor performing the colonoscopy removed precancerous growths known as polyps. Why the bill? Because a preventive screening had turned into a procedure.

Now the Obama administration is trying to straighten out the confusion: Polyp removal is part of preventive care, and therefore free of charge to the patient.

Health plans also must cover an expensive genetic test for breast cancer if a woman's doctor orders it. And the lowly aspirin for heart trouble is covered too, if prescribed.

When I was diagnosed in 1980, my insurer paid about 85% of the cost for c-scopes. As the procedure "caught on", though, so that more people were getting scoped than ever before by the 1990s, my insurer reduced per-patient coverage drastically-- getting down to 30% of the cost. So the Affordable Care Act will be very helpful if it mandates coverage of c-scopes (plus polypectomies) and banishes those insurers' arbitrary payment schedules. Let's hope ... / Old Hat (32 yrs with left-sided UC; presently in remission taking brandname Colazal)

I am grateful for the Affordable Care Act for selfish reasons. It is a good thing for people like us with pre-existing conditions and some of the uninsured. However, I believe that there are going to be one heck of a lot of people who are going to really regret that they supported this and voted for Obama. The premiums, deductibles, copays, and out of pocket expenses look like they are going to be sky high, especially for young healthy people and smokers. The average Joes & Janes who supported this and Obama weren't told that smokers were going to pay up the wazoo for coverage and the average Joes & Janes contain a larger percentage of smokers than the rest of the population. One good thing, if you can call it that, is government subsidies look like they are going to be far more generous than people realized. Unfortunately, that just means that this will be added to the government's expenses - a government that already spends one trillion more dollars per year than it has coming in. There are obviously going to be a lot of kinks that need to get worked out but how are they going to do that? They can't agree to anything else and the Republicans are going to do everything they can to obstruct Obamacare - using all of these kinks to their advantage so that the public clamours to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. In the end, it will stick but about 67% of the population will hate it.