Is Healthcare.gov the Future? We Ask a Health Futurist

The metaphor is the Wright Brothers, not the Indianapolis 500, says Ian Morrison. Lets just get this sucker up in the air before we declare that flying is a bad idea.

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The metaphor is the Wright Brothers, not the Indianapolis 500, says Ian Morrison. Lets just get this sucker up in the air before we declare that flying is a bad idea. (Photo credit: ianmorrison.com)

Ian Morrison is a health care futurist.

Companies, trade groups and nonprofits call on him to speak about trends in health care and offer prognostications of what the future brings. Ive heard him speak a few times and his knowledge and sense of humor drew me in right away.

Last Friday, I tweeted a story written by Anna Gorman and Julie Appleby, friends at Kaiser Health News, about hundreds of thousands of consumers receiving cancellation notices from their insurance companies on account of the Affordable Care Act.

I was surprised to learn that Morrison was one of them.

I emailed him to find out more. This is what he told me: Until 2011, Morrison paid for his health coverage from a company on whose board of directors he served. The company was sold and he was insured through COBRA until this March. As he tells it, Blue Shield of California didnt want a badly behaved 60 year old Scotsman, so he got coverage through a preferred-provider organization offered by the insurance company Health Net through a Farm Bureau program.

No kidding, he says, hes no farmer.

Two weeks ago, he said he received a letter canceling that plan. He subsequently applied for coveragenot through Covered California, the states new health insurance marketplace, but directly through Blue Shield. Because of the Affordable Care Acts ban on discriminating based on pre-existing conditions, the insurer must take him.

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Is Healthcare.gov the Future? We Ask a Health Futurist