Once Again, ObamaCare Is Simply The HMO-ization Of Healthcare All Over Again

And given the choice, people overwhelmingly pick Preferred Provider Organizations (PPOs) over Health Maintenance Organizations.

But under ObamaCare, you have no choice.

Flashback to Scott Gottlieb, here, in September:

Obamacare's exchange based plans will be a throwback to the 1990s style of restrictive HMOs. They will give you fewer choices of doctors and hospitals than the kinds of health plans currently sold in the private, commercial marketplace. The doctor networks that Obamacare plans use will resemble Medicaid plans.

Now comes this from The Wall Street Journal, here:

Nearly half of the ObamaCare plans are tightly managed HMOs, according to a McKinsey & Co. analysis. In states like California, Missouri and New Hampshire, many networks are 40% or 45% the size of those offered for normal commercial coverage. Patients face the prospect of waiting months and driving miles to clinics and county hospitals.

Narrow networks can be a useful cost-control tool, to the extent people choose to give up medical options in return for lower premiums. But that's rarely what people want when they're choosing with their own money. Some 82.5% of eHealth customers in 2012 purchased preferred provider organization plans (PPOs) that are structured so patients can visit virtually any physician.

The awful irony of this new ObamaCare health system is that all adults now enjoy mandated pediatric vision benefits, even if they don't have kids, but parents can't take their daughter to an expensive children's hospital if she gets really sick. Everybody gets "free" preventive checkups with no copays, but not treatment for a complex illness from specialists at an academic medical center.

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ObamaCare must be scrapped.