Unlimited Liability: A Reporter Must Have Read The Blog

The Mandela story become the Obama story; again, another icon and it's all about him. I can't make this stuff up. The Los Angeles Times is reporting:

Speaking before  reporters Thursday, Obama recounted that “the first thing I ever did that involved an issue or policy or politics” was a college protest against apartheid.

“I would study his words and his writings.

The day he was released from prison it gave me a sense of what human beings can do when they’re guided by their hopes and not by their fears,” Obama said.

Obama’s admiration has largely been from afar.

They met once — in a Washington hotel room in 2005 when Mandela was on a speaking tour. At the last minute, a Mandela associate arranged a meeting between the aging icon and the newly elected young senator from Illinois. Obama has rarely spoken publicly of that day. After Obama was elected president, Mandela kept a photo of the encounter in his office.

It looks like President Obama spent more time with his uncle "the White House" did not know about than the amount of time the president spoke with Mr Mandela (fifteen seconds for a photo-op). 

But I digress. That was not what I was going to write about. I was going to write about something else. I got distracted, and now I forget. Oh, here it is. I uploaded it earlier, and fortunately the window is still open. Yahoo!Finance/U-Express is reporting:

"Uh-oh." That's the sound being uttered in doctors' offices and hospitals across the country as medical providers realize they're getting stuck with another bottomless Obamacare bill. While the White House desperately tries to pivot from the havoc wrought by the "Affordable Care Act," its hidden regulatory bombs keep exploding.

I heard about the latest problem this week from an eye doctor friend who received a letter from a Colorado-based insurer informing her that she's essentially on the hook for Obamacare's payment grace period for debtors. The optometrist is bracing for a flood of similar letters from other insurers. Like countless other independent providers, she's extremely concerned about the potential liability, uncertainty and fraud the rule imposes on her business.

Here's the raw deal: The Affordable Care Act created a 90-day grace period before insurers can drop patients who fall behind on premiums. So, delinquents who obtain tax-subsidized health insurance through an Obamacare health insurance exchange have three months to settle up their bills prior to their policy being canceled. As written, the law puts insurers on the hook for the grace period.

Not to worry. Doctors, clinics, and hospitals are not neophytes. Non-emergency medical care will need to be paid for in advance. They will let the patients get reimbursed by the insurance company, which of course will never happen. In the big scheme of things, there is very little emergency medicine compared to all the elective crap that can be pushed into the next quarter.

At the end of the day, it's the insurers themselves that have the unlimited liability (once the annual deductible is met).  We will start seeing those stories next July. July 25th, Friday. Count on it.