Despite the White House repeatedly promising that ObamaCare would expand healthcare options, millions of people have been forced to sign up for Medicaid, seemingly against their will, as Charlene Hopkins found out for herself.
ObamaCare forcing people into Medicaid | Fox News
One womans demoralizing experience with the ObamaCare website, which her daughter documented in an article this week in The Wall Street Journal, is shining a light on how the health care law is forcing people into Medicaid even if they dont want it.
"How has it come to this?" Nicole Hopkins wrote of her mothers experience.
After having had her insurance canceled this fall like so many millions of Americans, her mother Charlene sought a new insurance policy on HeathCare.gov. But it gave her only one choice Medicaid - which is the government's traditional safety net to cover the uninsured poor.
Charlene Hopkins does not see herself as poor and resents having to stoop to what she believes is a taxpayer funded hand-out, when she prides herself on a life of independence and self-sufficiency.
It is a trait that was nurtured on the Wisconsin farm where Charlene was raised by parents who accepted no handouts of their own, and found dignity in work and in helping others. "The pride is from being able to take care of yourself in all ways, and health insurance, for example, is just one of those things you do," she says.
The White House has repeatedly maintained that ObamaCare expands options, a mantra that White House Press Secretary Jay Carney repeated on Friday. "They'll have choices they didn't have in the past, including a range of options when it comes to levels of coverage," he said.
But those options don't apply to the millions who will be directed to Medicaid, many of them hardly impoverished.
ObamaCare forcing people into Medicaid | Fox News