Obamacare navigator program a waste of time and money

I am writing to commend the Review-Journal for its Friday editorial criticizing the Affordable Care Act’s “navigator” program. As a 20-year plus insurance professional here in Las Vegas, I find this navigator program particularly galling and offensive. Why? Because our country and our state already have the perfect system in place to help people with their individual health insurance needs — insurance brokers and agents.

Here in Clark County, and across the state of Nevada, we have hundreds of licensed, professional, knowledgeable insurance brokers who have been meeting with individuals, families and businesses for decades to help them with health insurance. There was never any cost to our clients for these services, nor any cost to the government for us to help the consumer.

Yet when Obamacare was passed, the federal government decided to spend billions of dollars on the unnecessary navigator program. And as the RJ pointed out, navigators actually had very little impact — less than 1 percent of all those who enrolled in Obamacare used a navigator.

Navigators were not licensed professionals. They could not compare plans and make recommendations, break down co-pays and deductibles, explain how co-insurance works, analyze provider networks, help a person if they had a claim or billing problem, etc. Insurance brokers do all of this with clients every day.

We all know that there are strong opinions out there, pro and con, about Obamacare. Without question, this boondoggle called the “navigator” program was a massive “con.” What a waste of money, resources and time.