Patients find fewer doctors, hospitals to choose from | www.myajc.com

The cancer had already spread to her abdomen by the time Beth Brock managed to escape from her health insurance nightmare.

The Woodstock business owner learned last fall her insurance didn’t meet the Affordable Care Act’s new standards, so she reluctantly chose a different health plan that her doctors assured her they accepted. But they didn’t.

Brock, 48, was waiting at her OB/GYN for a pre-surgical visit — the last step before an operation to remove an ovarian cyst — when the billing office called to say it didn’t accept her new plan after all. It would be two months before she untangled the mess and switched to a health plan that covered a broader array of doctors. By then, the cyst had grown from slightly larger than a walnut to bigger than a softball.

“I had lost all that time,” said Brock, who is undergoing chemotherapy. “If (the surgeon) could have operated on me in January … it wouldn’t have had the opportunity to grow huge and spread.”

Her chance of living for another five years is 40 percent.

Nearly nine months after the scrambled launch of the federal Health Insurance Marketplace, some Georgians have been shocked and dismayed to find their new insurance plans offer far fewer doctors, specialists and hospitals to choose from than they’ve come to expect.

via Patients find fewer doctors, hospitals to choose from | www.myajc.com.