No one (Except those on Medicare) would every have kept the health insurance they had

The New Republic has a nice piece on the hubbub going on in certain circles of L.A. who's future health insurance will not cover stuff (except on a special needs basis) at Cedars-Sinai Hospital.  Never mind that other hospitals do a lot as well and even better than Cedars-Sinai and will be in the future health insurance network.  Reputation does not equal quality of care.

I now quote from Jonathan Cohn's article on the reality of all this.  This stuff was going to happen even without Obamacare.

"Even before Obamacare, employers and insurers were already moving in the direction of limiting networks and penalizing costly hospitals like Cedars.  Both the University of California and the City of Los Angeles aggressively limited provider networks affecting thousands of people without any reaction by the media or politicians.  Now, as more of this occurs, it is possible that Obamacare accelerated it, but it is also likely Obamacare gave the insurers the cover needed to do what they wanted to do to try and control costs."

"The only way to avoid this market driven attack on costs is to have the government do the job instead.  In other words, you need a single payer plan in which all hospitals accept everyone's insurance.   But that conversation never got past the phrase "government run medicine", and Americans chose to place their faith in market forces.  The insurers have adapted and so have the hospitals.  Now it is the consumer's turn, and that means relinquishing the idea that cachet always equals quality."

What irks me is not these changes, but that the GOP in their desire to destroy President Obama disown their own ideas on how to use the market place to control health care costs.  How are they ever going to implement this same stuff if they don't accept Obamacare as the starting place?