Julie Boonstra Tells the Detroit News Why Her New Healthcare Plan Doesn’t Work for Her: It Requires Her to Read the Policy or Ask Blue Cross a Few Basic Questions In Order to Learn What the Plan Actually Covers and What Her Expense Cap Is.
Oh, dear. I won’t summarize this for you; you really have to read it in full. (Or maybe just read Glenn Kessler’s article about it posted today.)
And to think I had thought Julie Boonstra’s only comprehension problem was with basic math. Turns out she also has a problem with reading comprehension and with understanding explicit short answers to oral questions posed to, say, a Blue Cross representative. Or maybe just with recognizing that she could learn the specifics of her plan simply by doing one or the other of those things.
Hey, she could have done both! But first she’d have to have figured out that reading her plan or asking a Blue Cross representative might provide that information.
Yep. The Republican Party really is the party of stupid. Then again, maybe she knew all along, but thought everyone else is stupid. Okay, I’ll give in and quote this, from Kessler’s post:
Boonstra’s response to this report was that it “can’t be true” because she was worried about high expenses early in the year and because she thought one of her prescription drugs was not covered. A spokesman for Blue Cross told the News that all of her prescriptions are covered and her co-pays on the drugs would help with meeting her out-of-pocket maximum.
It can’t be true, because the truth exists not in reality but instead in her mind. Hopefully, this woman doesn’t fear a nuclear attack by Martians. Or by the Koch brothers, although that might be prescient, if the attack is to be on, say, Nancy Pelosi’s congressional district.
Seriously, folks. Does anyone really think this woman had no idea what her plan provided, if not when she purchased it, then sometime shortly afterward? This new information brings into question the truth of her back-story about being unable for nearly three months to access the Michigan link at healthcare.com and gain information about available plans. (It also raises questions about whether she is in fact receiving subsidies for her new in-any-event-lower monthly premiums, although of course there is no way to learn that.)
Let’s hear it for Detroit News reporter Marisa Schultz. And, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the Detroit newspaper market: Detroit has two longtime mainstream newspapers, the Free Press, which leans Democratic, and the News, which leans Republican, but both papers’ reporting staffs are journalists in the old-fashioned sense. They’re real journalists, not propagandists.
Yes, folks. The Detroit News leans Republican.
Hi Bev:
The lady is likely dying from cancer. I am not sure she would care much about anything today. I know when I was laying around the hospital I did not care. The fact remains, the Republicans have used her through the Koch Brothers privately funded AFP. They are the ones most responsible for this as I explained on the Livingston Daily (County News) to the former news General Manager and the rest of the readers. The AFP and the Republicans are the ones to which you should direct your words.
http://www.livingstondaily.com/comments/article/20140309/OPINION03/303090027/Letters-editor-Bibles-Sistine-Chapel-book-Gary-Peters-more
I believe your onslaught directed toward Julie is a bit over the top.
Glenn Kessler says this: “In other words, her old plan cost $13,200 a year—before co-pays and other out-of-pocket expenses. The new plan is $11,952—including co-pays and out of pocket expenses. That’s a savings of more than $1,200 a year.”
How stupid is Glenn Kessler? Does he not realize after all this time that the $13,200 is for premiums only, while the $11,952 is for premiums PLUS whatever out-of-pocket costs her old policy did not cover. It is virtually certain that the old policy did not have an out-of-pocket maximum of $0. The savings is not $1200 a year (roughly), but $1200 plus those out-of-pocket costs under the old policy.
Can’t he see when apples are not being compared to apples? And, for that matter, that the real savings amounts to four pinocchios instead of three?
I agree, I LIKE to read her plan also, maybe even the fine print.
Run75441: EXACTLY!!! This poor woman, in her sad state of health, has been set upon by leaches(Koch Bros.) and the awfulness of hardball American Politics. Throw the press in there and she NEEDS treatment for 4 diseases, cancer being one of them. THANX for the link.
Having read Run75441’s link I observe that the question of Mr. Peters not having come out on this matter was put forth. This is beginning to look like straight up PAC politics(swiftboating) to me.
Mike:
If you look you will see works from and a link back to one of Bev’s early posts discussing Peters and what he asked for from the AFP.
“I agree, I LIKE to read her plan also, maybe even the fine print.”
Mike,
It is still not enough for you? Amazing.
Run,
I have to disagree regarding the woman and her culpability. I am sorry she has serious health issues, but a lie is a lie. Though certainly the Koch brothers deserve far more blame.
Before anyone gets too excited about the balanced reporting, look up the coverage documents from BCBS for this plan. You will see that the only conventional coverage is for tier 1 generics with a $15 copay after the $5100 deductible is met. tier1 generics are $4 at Walmart without a prescription plan.
The next two tiers are paid by copay. 25% for tier2 and 50% for tier3
Tier4 and Tier5 are covered only in 30day quantities and not at all except by mail order. If this cancer patient goes to the pharmacy for these drugs like she always has, she has no coverage. Uncovered drugs are not applied to deductible or out of pocket maximums according to the typical summary plan exemptions.
So, her new plan requires her to order by mail every 30 days or all of these examples don’t apply. I shouldn’t want this for any person I care about and certainly don’t expect that anyone would have gone out of their way to explain to her how to make them pay for 80% of a drug she says costs $2000 per month once the pharmacy told her that she had no coverage.
Marv:
It happens to all of us for drugs. If your drugs are lost or damaged, a Tier 3 drug like Metopolol which I use requires an account executive (name unknown) to approve it. This requirement is outside of the PPACA.
Marv: THANK YOU!
The deductible for her plan is $150, not $5100 (that’s the out-of-pocket max).
For retail prescription drugs:
“1-30 day supply (Retail network pharmacy and mail-order provider)
Tier 1 – Generic: $15 copay after deductible
Tier 2 – Preferred Brand: 25% coinsurance after deductible $40 minimum and $100 maximum copay
Tier 3 – Nonpreferred Brand: 50% coinsurance after deductible $80 minimum and $100 maximum copay
Tier 4 – Preferred Specialty: 20% coinsurance after deductible no minimum and $200 maximum copay
Tier 5 – Nonpreferred Specialty: 25% coinsurance after deductible no minimum and $300 maximum copay”
Rite Aid, 500 generic-brand prescriptions available: $9 for a 30-day prescription; $16 for a 90-day one. There’s a Rite Aid on the far-west side of Ann Arbor, just east of Dexter.
And while this woman said her old plan covered a drug that her new plan doesn’t, she did not say that that drug was one of her cancer drugs, and she did not say that her old plan covered every drug.
She also, by the way, has not said–because she doesn’t know, and either does Blue Cross–what her old plan would have cost in monthly premiums and out-of-pocket expenses and co-pays THIS YEAR, had the plan not been discontinued. But it sure as hell would be interesting to know how her old plan differed in costs and coverage last year from the year before, and how much her premiums and out-of-pocket and co-pay costs went up in, say, the last five years on that plan.
Bev:
She can always appeal a decision not to cover a drug and it is more likely she will get a positive decision now than before.
Rite Aid discount drug plan link: https://content.riteaid.com/www.riteaid.com/w-content/images/pharmacy/RA_RXSavings_Directory_081710.pdf
Still think she is not getting anything from AFP?? At some point the milk of human kindness has to start to curdle
Eli:
Nope, those bastards are too cheap.
All one needs to know to understand the underlying motives in this “she said, they said” controversy is noted in the Detroit News article,
“Boonstra is the ex-wife of Mark Boonstra, the former Washtenaw County GOP chairman whom Gov. Rick Snyder appointed to the Michigan Court of Appeals in 2012. Julie Boonstra said she’s never been a political person beyond advocating for lower-cost oral chemotherapy treatment in Washington.”
No, she’s never been a political person. She had only been married to a political person who was apparently close to the Republican Gov. of Michigan. Are we supposed to believe that Ms. Boonstra’s selection as the ad’s spokes person is entirely due to her illness or her confusion over the health plan costs?
As I had said in an earlier comment thread on this same subject, it’s not Boonstra that is the guilty party here. It is the producers of the advertisement which is apparently blatantly false. Now we have not only unlimited funding, but brashly false political advertising.
I consider ALL political advertising false, both sides. Seems everybody has an agenda that doesn’t benefit me.(Spying, drones, phony reasons for war, torture houses, bombing the neighbors, million dollar bombs etc., etc., on&on)
“When everyone is out to get you, paranoia is just being careful.”
Woody Allen
I have to agree with EMichael. Yes, we should feel compassion for this woman. And our blame should be mostly on the political consultants who are taking advantage of her loyalty to movement conservatism (I don’t think she’s stupid at all because I’ve seen very intelligent people really, really want to believe something is true so much that they believe their rightthink).
But her comments are intended to rescind the ACA, which has already insured over 12 million people. I’m sure there are people who either have or will get cancer among those 12 million. Just because they don’t have TV ads doesn’t mean that their lives aren’t important as well, and Boonstra has the ability to temper her ideological fervor with, you know, having a basic understanding of her plan before going on national TV to talk about it.