ObamaCare: You Can't Keep Your Doctor. Or Your Hospital. Or Your Pharmacy.

NPR early this morning confirmed The FT story that was posted yesterday; that story was taken down and placed in draft so that Bakken stories would lead overnight. This post will be up only for a few minutes and also taken down. Everything will be re-posted later this morning after the Bakken news is presented.

But back to the NPR story. It turns out that, according to NPR, "a powerful Tea Party faction" prevented New Hampshire from setting up its own state Obamacare website, and thus New Hampshire must rely on the federal exchange. [Based on what is going on in Oregon, New Hampshire's political sister, it sounds like New Hampshire made the right choice. Oregon's state website is still not up.]

Only one insurance company "signed up" for New Hampshire's website: Anthem BC/BS, and Anthem "locked out" 26 hospitals across New Hampshire. NPR did not state the reason but it would have been done because the hospitals a) did not meet Anthem's medical standards; b) were inefficient and costly; and/or c) maybe first-rate hospitals but excessively expensive. Something tells me the teaching hospitals were part of the "locked out" hospitals.

Good for Anthem BC/BS -- doing the right thing: forcing hospitals to provide reasonable care at a reasonable price. If folks want better care, they can pay more -- the President's tzar on health care (yesterday, Sunday morning talk shows previously linked), and even the President has told folks to "shop around."

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Forbes: you can't keep your pharmacy either.  I wouldn't get too shook about this. There are plenty of medications, brand-name and generic, to choose from. This is simply tweaking the drug list you worked so hard to massage for your personal needs. A year from now you will be happy with your new drug list. Or not.