<p>CF, I have no clue as to what if anything was uploaded. I just know that when I finally managed to get to a search screen and ran some searches, I got back garbled data for many of the listings. I don’t remember seeing that before, but maybe I wasn’t running the same searches.</p>
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I don’t think “elective” surgery is one of the essential benefits that is covered by ACA policies. </p>
<p>I’m thinking you are confused about what health insurance is supposed to cover. It’s not intended as a way to subsidize lifestyle choices. </p>
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<p>You want insurance to cover elective procedures at the most expensive hospitals in the state, but you don’t want to have pay more for it – is that about right?</p>
<p>“Common sense. The insurers are running a business. They want customers. They want profits. They also want to keep premiums affordable by holding down costs, because that helps them get more customers. It’s basic economics.”</p>
<p>This is not the economics I learned in school. Keeping costs down will mean excluding doctors who don’t agree to their very low reimbursement rates. Also, they will not lose customers because what is the alternative. Remember the law has done away with any choice. Actually, the best outcome for the insurance companies is having the govt pay for all the unsubsidized customers and making sure they don’t have access to medical care by limiting the number of providers.</p>
<p>Calmom, with your last statement about elective surgery I have to question your knowledge about this topic. It’s hard to believe that you actually said elective surgery will not be covered by ACA. You don’t think hip surgery, knee replacement, inguinal hernia operation and almost any other surgery that is not considered to be an emergency will not be covered.</p>
<p>“I thought that with the passage of the mental health parity, there could no longer be treatment limitations such as this???”</p>
<p>There are exceptions, and I don’t know how many (folks with them) will remain after Jan. Some of the mental health stuff hasn’t been spelled out.</p>
<p>Someone tried to block Kaiser from being on the exchange because they are already in trouble for not providing enough mental health services and providers.</p>
<p>This is an inflammatory source: I will try to find a better one.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.kaiserthrive.org%5B/url%5D”>http://www.kaiserthrive.org</a></p>
<p>A different source</p>
<p><a href=“http://unionwatch.org/union-files-lawsuit-exploiting-obamacare-in-california-for-organizing-purposes/[/url]”>http://unionwatch.org/union-files-lawsuit-exploiting-obamacare-in-california-for-organizing-purposes/</a></p>
<p>Goldenpooch, reading your posts make me think you believe there is only a handful of good doctors in the world. I just don’t think that’s true. </p>
<p>By the way, in my part of the country the “RAP” and ER docs accept all insurance that the hospital accepts. Can you imagine the chaos if you only had on shift anesthesiologists who accepted one insurance, and you got 4 emergency surgeries who carried other insurance?</p>
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I design web sites for living, CF, and have done so for 19 years. It’s easier now than it has ever been. The major browsers are now all standards compliant, and the only tricky stuff these days comes up with display issues with different versions of IE that can usually be addressed in the style sheet. The other tricky part is designing the site to be readable and usable on tablets and mobile devices, another area where the exchanges sites are disappointing. </p>
<p>I don’t think its a Chrome issue in any case. I think it’s a browser resizing issue – the site is designed to be viewed full width, and I had my browser window set to about 900 px width. I’d check but I just get an error message on Explorer saying the site can’t be found, and Chrome now displays these words: "Oracle Access Manager Operation Error</p>
<p>The Access Server has returned a fatal error with no detailed information.</p>
<p>Contact your website administrator to remedy this problem."</p>
<p>Hayden, I said elective surgery, not emergency surgery. Probably 90% of all surgeries are elective. I didn’t say there are only a few good doctors; what I said is that the doctors who won’t agree to these very low reimbursement rates are probably the most competent and successful doctors.</p>
<p>In #743, I meant to say subsidized not unsubsidized</p>
<p>Goldenpooch, that is not accurate. Surgery does not come in two categories, elective and emergency. The largest category by far is surgery which is medically necessary but non-emergent surgery. The patient that presents with serious pain and impaired mobility may need a hip replacement, and may decide to put it off for a month. That doesn’t make it “elective”.</p>
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<p>So are you trying to point out that you don’t understand the subtleties of elective surgery or are you just trying to stir the pot?</p>
<p>Hayden, for the purpose of what we are discussing, the patient is responsible for ensuring the anesthesiologist is in the network for a surgery that is scheduled at some point in the future, including the one you to which you referred.</p>
<p>Limewire, Calmom said it is not incumbent on the patient to make sure the anesthesiologist is in the network for surgeries. Given that almost all surgeries are elective (not emergency), I was pointing out that is not right.</p>
<p>My disagreement with Calmom is not philosophical (although it may be on another level), I just feel that these very narrow networks for the exchanges will be deleterious for patients and she seems to think it will not be a problem.</p>
<p>Not all the insurance plans have narrow networks. There is a lot of variation in the 50 states.</p>
<p>Momfromme, I don’t know what is taking place in other states, only California.</p>
<p>And I’m suggesting that you are using an incorrect term. Elective does not mean what you think it means. </p>
<p>On the other front, where you are, the patient may be responsible for ensuring the anesthesiologist takes the right insurance. But in my part of the country, the patient has nothing to do with choice of anesthesiologist.</p>
<p>Having Googled around, I see that some people define “elective surgery” as surgery that is not medically necessary, like breast implants and LASIX:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/elective-surgery[/url]”>http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/elective-surgery</a></p>
<p>But most of the sites use “elective surgery” to describe any surgery that doesn’t have to be done right now, including both medically essential treatments like hernia repair and gall bladder surgery, and non-essential treatments like breast implants.</p>
<p>[What</a> Is Elective Surgery?](<a href=“Parents (for Parents) - Nemours KidsHealth”>Elective Surgery (for Parents) - Nemours KidsHealth)</p>
<p>[Elective</a> surgery - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elective_surgery]Elective”>Elective surgery - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>BTW, Calmom please don’t take it personally, I think you are doing a great job of informing the readers on this thread. I hope I haven’t come on too strong, but your statement about anesthesiologists is not correct. I think it is okay to point out factual mistakes on this thread</p>
<p>Okay, CF, in that case I’ll certainly accept the other definition, and withdraw my comments to GP. I will say that is not how the world of managed care uses the term. When an MCO excludes elective surgery, they are definitely not excluding hip replacements.</p>