Scott Wahlin, CGCS said: Clay Putnam, CGCS said: Scott Wahlin, CGCS said: Your doctors and hospitals that are within a network are determined by the insurance carrier you choose not the ACA. If you want to keep your present doctors make sure they accept the insurance coverage you opt to buy. My doctor is a member of a large group of general practitioners and specialists that I like. I will call to verify that they accept a plan before I purchase it.
obamacare dictates the terms of the insurance coverage therefore, the doctor's and hospitals are determined by obamacare. Its a direct cause and effect.
The ACA does not dictate which doctors and hospitals individual insurance companies may choose with whom to enter business relationships.
I'm with Scott on this one, my doctors are chosen for me even before the ACA. My current employer chooses to contract with one network in our city. I have to choose a doctor in that network. To make matters worse for us, there are basically only two networks, our insurance company (or in our case the city) will choose one network over the other. The only time we can go to another Dr. out of network is for some specialties, such as pediatric pulmonary. We just hope they don't change networks, but that can happen.
I've told this story before, about 5 or 6 years ago, our neighbor who works for MoDOT and they changed networks in our city, so he had to change doctors, luckily the wife was on the school's insurance and she kept the kids on hers so they could stay in the network they were in. So it isn't really any different then before the ACA in that regard. Of course if they were up in the Kansas City area, MoDOT employees have a choice of about 5 networks to choose from. Not sure why it's different up there except Springfield is controlled by the two networks here.
Mel