When Harvard Met Obamacare: A Reverse Rom-Com

In a famous live version of his acidic mid-century folk song “Love Me, I’m A Liberal,” Phil Ochs introduces the number this way:

In every American community there are varying shades of political opinion. One of the shadiest of these is the liberals. An outspoken group on many subjects, ten degrees to the left of center in good times, ten degrees to the right of center if it affects them personally.

The perfect embodiment of this phenomenon, it turns out, is the faculty at Harvard University. As the Times recently, gleefully reported, professors throughout Cambridge are outraged that the health care reform reform many of them helped champion means that, though more people will be served and protected, they might also experience slight increases in cost.

Richard F. Thomas, a Harvard professor of classics and one of the world’s leading authorities on Virgil, called the changes “deplorable, deeply regressive, a sign of the corporatization of the university.” … The university is adopting standard features of most employer-sponsored health plans: Employees will now pay deductibles and a share of the costs, known as coinsurance, for hospitalization, surgery and certain advanced diagnostic tests. The plan has an annual deductible of $250 per individual and $750 for a family. For a doctor’s office visit, the charge is $20.

TWENTY DOLLARS. Get out those pearls and start clutching.

The real world is creeping, like ivy, into and around even the taller ivory tower. Forbes is happy to note that world-renowned academics, when threatened with even tiny challenges to the status quo, behave the same way ordinary mortals do: “irrationally.”

People who pay for their own consumption don’t have the luxury of being able to pretend that tradeoffs don’t exist. Walk into a BMW dealership and announce, “I want a 7-series at Hyundai prices!”, and the dealer will laugh at you. … workers end up demanding mutually incompatible things: comprehensive health-insurance coverage that doesn’t cost them anything.

For what it’s worth, my little family has been on Obamacare for six months now; the exchanges are enabling, even making possible, our experiment in DWYL living. So far, I give the experience two thumbs up. Ben and I have been happy with Oscar: our only interactions have been positive ones, like when the company realized I had been charged too much for my flu shot and called me to apologize and assure me they would refund the money. And then followed through, in a reasonable time frame, which is virtually unheard of.

By contrast, when I needed a refund in 2012 from my previous, mainstream insurer, it took nine months and ten phone calls.

Babygirl’s initial insurer, HealthFirst Child Plus, another mainstream insurer, was far less organized. They sent us bundles of paper by mail, including redundant bills, even after I signed up for e-everything and online auto-pay, and their representatives were difficult to get on the phone. But we’ve now switched Lara to Amerigroup HealthPlus at $45 (!) a month. We’ll see whether the service there is any better.

The point is THANK YOU HARVARD PROFESSORS. I get that you’re steamed now, or perhaps you’ve moved on to embarrassment that you threw your tantrum in public. Either way, when you calm down, please realize that on balance you did a good thing by helping make the ACA a reality. Even if the financial repercussions sting a little.

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