Obamacare Denying Meds From People With Serious Pre-Existing Diseases

A glitch in the President's signature legislation is preventing people with serious conditions such as lupis or multiple sclerosis from being covered for their expensive drug regimen. Basically they are finding out their expensive drugs are not on their insurance plans list of approved drugs.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb of the American Enterprise Institute explains,"if the medicine that you need isn't on that list, it's not covered at all. You have to pay completely out of pocket to get that medicine, and the money you spend doesn't count against your deductible, and it doesn't count against your out of pocket limits, so you're basically on your own."

The plan had claimed it would rescue those with serious pre-existing conditions.

"So it could be that a MS patient could be expected to pay $62,000 just for one medication," says Dr. Daniel Kantor, who treats MS patients and others with neurological conditions near Jacksonville, Florida. "That’s a possiblity under the new ObamaCare going on right now."

In fact, one conservative group, Americans for Prosperity, is running an ad on exactly this subject, featuring a woman with lupus, an auto-immune disease.

She starts by saying, "I voted for Barack Obama for president. I thought ObamaCare was going to be a good thing."

But Emilie Lamb says she later got a letter saying her insurance was canceled because of ObamaCare, pushing her premiums from $52 to $373 a month.

"I'm having to work a second job, to pay for ObamaCare,” she adds. “For somebody with lupus, that's not an easy thing. If I can't afford to continue to pay for ObamaCare, I don't get my medicine. I don't get to see my doctors."

One of the problems is that drugs for some diseases such as MS do not have generic versions. So without cheaper alternatives and no help from ObamaCare, patients could face huge personal out-of-pocket bills, forcing some to skimp on their medications.

Facing that high out of pocket some may skip their medicine making their conditions even worse.

In the commercial market, of course, drugs not on a preferred list would also be more expensive, but with a major difference, according to Gottlieb.

"You go outside that list, you have to pay out of pocket for it, but you do get some co-insurance, meaning the plans will pay some of the cost of that."

This "glitch" is another result of the administration's insistence to get the bill passed and implemented as soon as possible. Heck most progressives who voted in favor of the law had no idea what they were voting for. It's what happens when ideology trumps reason, there wasn't enough time to investigate, research, and do it right. And sadly the people the law was designed to help most are being hurt the most.