CHIPPEWA FALLS (WQOW) – Dr. Mary Landwehr, known simply as Dr. Mary to her patients, started Sunrise Family Care Clinic in Chippewa Falls about 15 years ago.
“I really like private practice because there’s nobody between me and my patients,” she said.
Now Landwehr is worried about her own health care.
“Our insurance broker said, ‘by the way are you aware that premiums are going to increase maybe even double by the end of this year or beginning of next year’,” Landwehr said.
With the enhanced premium tax credit subsidies in the Affordable Care Act set to expire, Landwehr says her three-person basic family health insurance plan will go from $1,792 to $2,753, a 50% increase.
Now she says they have to look at other plan options.
“That’s scary to say I’m either going to have to give up providers I’m used to seeing or my family members are used to seeing, or we don’t have medication coverage,” Landwehr said. “Something has to give.”
Landwehr is not alone. She says the questions she has are the same questions her patients are asking her.
“Can I still come and see you? Does this mean my network is going to change? Will I be able to afford my medications? Those are questions I can listen to and I can only kind of tell them that we’ll do the best we can,” she said.
The enhanced premium tax credits in the Affordable Care Act are set to expire at the end of 2025, unless they are extended by Congress.
“I wish that our elected officials, all of them, would stand up and explain what that means,” Landwehr said. “Because our patients don’t know and quite honestly, I don’t know.”
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