What Does Obamacare Have in Common With the Mafia?

How is Obamacare like the Mafia? Once you are in you can never leave. 

Meet Lesli Hill.

Missouri resident Lesli Hill learned the hard way that terminating an Affordable Care Act plan can be far more difficult than navigating the website to buy one. She spent six weeks being bounced from operator to operator, calling the help line, using the online chat, blasting out emails to anyone who would listen, before ultimately driving to Kansas City last week to enlist her insurance company's help. Only then was she able to break through the bureaucratic logjam, and cancel her policy. 

Fox News

If Obamacare is so great why did she want out?

Her exchange plan didn't suit her so she went looking and found a BETTER plan outside the exchange.

This is not unusual. Georgia citizens can almost always find a health insurance plan with a broader network for about the same price as an exchange plan before subsidies. Similar stories pop up in other states as well.

She checked with Blue Cross Blue Shield in early December and was told she'd have to cancel her ObamaCare plan first. 

"At that point, I hadn't paid my premium ... so I thought okay, that'll be easy to do," she said. 

Ostensibly, yes. She tried using a simple "terminate button" on the website -- but it wasn't working. 

I presume the button is on the infamous healthcare.flub page.

When that didn't work she called the help line. 

Several times. 

Over several days. 

Eventually she was reassured the original plan was terminated.

But then her bank account was drafted for the initial premium on the terminated plan.

What follows is the ultimate irony of dealing with government bureaucracy.

Hill went on a blitz, breaking through to another layer at the HealthCare.gov help line. But the answer she was given was that cancellations are handled by a "special department," the number of which could not be given out. 

"He said, 'I'm not allowed to tell you that,'" Hill told FoxNews.com.

I suppose the good news is they didn't say they could tell her but then they would have to kill her.

Obamacare, the Hotel California and the Mafia all have something in common. Once you are in you can never leave.