To give the CliffsNotes version of the three-hour session, it went a little like this: The woman beside me, named Jenny, a naturalized citizen from Ecuador, spent two and a half hours trying to crunch through the system before it finally returned her to the first page, then locked her out. She never even saw the prices. When Blade had her call the phone support hotline, they told her she’d need to wait three weeks to find out the status of her application. The same happened to her colleague, Sue, sitting next to her. They both need insurance now, because the endocrinologist they work for had to cancel theirs because it didn’t meet Obamacare requirements. They’re hoping not only that they can get insurance, but also that they can keep their jobs, since Jenny, who does billing for the doctor, says Obamacare is completely convoluting how, if at all, they’ll be able to collect money from patients.
Two men sitting behind me get to a price list, though one wigs out because of the high premiums and leaves. The other finds a relatively cheap plan, but the deductible is so high, for his family of four, that he says, “I can’t touch this.” And he leaves, too. The two people on the other side of Jenny and Sue, whom I never even meet, leave after about 30 minutes. Blade suggests it’s probably because of “sticker shock,” if they even got that far. A recurring problem, he says, in his line of work.
