Posted on 01/10/2014 11:34:48 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Humana Inc., the nation's fourth-largest health insurer by market share, warned Thursday that the risk pool of applicants for insurance through President Obama's health care law would be worse than previously expected.
Ever since the botched rollout of the health care law's exchanges in October, the policy community has been eager to know more about the mix of individuals signing up for insurance through the law.
Because the law forces insurers to cover those with pre-existing conditions, insurers need to attract a critical mass of young and healthy individuals with lower medical costs into the exchanges to offset the cost. But the Obama administration has yet to release demographic data on those who have picked a plan through the exchanges.
But in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Humana disclosed to investors, "as a result of the December 2013 federal and state regulatory changes allowing certain individuals to remain in their previously existing off-exchange health plans, the Company now expects the risk mix of members enrolling through the health insurance exchanges to be more adverse than previously expected."
The regulatory change Humana is referring to is the "administrative fix" announced by the Obama administration aimed at allowing individuals to remain enrolled in their current plans, which had been cancelled as a result of requirements imposed by the law. Obama announced the "fix" after a storm of criticism over his broken promise that anybody who liked their plan could keep it. Insurers had been depending on those with cancelled plans (who tend to be healthier) to end up obtaining insurance through exchanges.
Humana said that the company was "evaluating" the financial effects of the changes, but at this time, did not adjust their earnings forecast for 2014.
In the same filing, Humana said cuts to Medicare Advantage payments to private insurers made by the health care law would be steeper than expected, triggering changes to benefits.
"The Company expects to continue its standard process of seeking alternatives to minimize the disruption to Medicare beneficiaries this level of rate decline may cause," the filing read. "Such alternatives include clinical management programs, operating cost efficiencies, benefit changes, market exits and other operating strategies. In the interim, the Company also expects to continue its efforts to educate CMS, the Administration and Congress on the adverse impact such rate pressures have upon Medicare beneficiaries."
And what would happen if they vote no and don't give it to him?
The entire health insurance industry turns turtle and goes under is what.
Whereupon, there is no choice: single payer becomes the only solution.
Be careful what you wish for...
“Humana Inc., the nation’s fourth-largest health insurer by market share, warned Thursday that the risk pool of applicants for insurance through President Obama’s health care law would be worse than previously expected. “
One of the Federal Work Camp’s contractors warned that the boxcars body count tally, into the Extortion-Care Concentration Camp, would be worse than previously expected.
Exactly right!
The theme should be to damn the government and its overbearing size. It should be, how do $600 toilet seats translate to copayments? It should be that everything the government takes on, other than world war, turns into sh¡t!
So, the thing to do is not to cut the US down to size, as has been Obama’s foreign policy, but to cut the USG down to size!
Dream on.
Consider how it's worked in Canada and the UK. Admittedly, your average Canuck or Limey is not the equal of a red-blooded American. But Americans elected Barack Obama twice. So, I'm not ready to trust American Exceptionalism on this issue.
Single payer must never be allowed to be tried.
RE: “A system that prevents sickness, promotes wellness and reduces overall costs.”
This is such a scam.
We are basically talking about a once a year appointment where a nurse will take your vitals.
Then, you will have a 15 minute chat with a doctor you have never met before who will counsel you about weight, smoking, diet, exercise, in other words, the same things your Mom and Dad talked to you about when you were a little kid.
If you actually have symptoms of a potential disease, you will need to make a new appointment (probably a month or more in the future) and come back for a real examination!
The number of people who will be diagnosed at an early cost saving stage of some disease will be ridiculously small.
And, 95% of the people who feel healthy will never schedule a “prevention” appointment at all.
What I'm saying is that the same Republicans who plan to ride ObamaCare to victory in November will cement it firmly in place BEFORE we have the election.
The GOP is going to do NOTHING to stop it!
“And they will fail completely, “
Enough people are dumb enough to believe the new lies they’ll tell. “It’s going to be free to you. We’ll make those evil rich people pay.” Thirty-eight percent of the populace still supports him. If the government spent $600 million dollars on advertising suicide vacations half of those people would sign up.
Ya think?
I know this will become more invasive and you will be required to meet health goals, or else.
I have also been pointing our for some time exactly what Humana said: while it is true that the healthier or younger insurees were supposed to subsidize the sicker or older ones, in reality even this isn’t workable. While older insureds may pay less for their plans, the benefits have been severely reduced by everything from a reduction in covered procedures to a huge rise in the deductibles and out of pocket expenses. This is going to be devastating to Medicare Advantage subscribers.
So in other words, no one benefits from Obamacare.
Except Big Government control.
Oh my, health goals, or else.
Please, God, let me wake up from this Marxist tyrannical nightmare!
It should be obvious to the most causal observer that this was an intentional failure. The powers that be will ignore the people’s wishes about Obomacare just as they have ignored our wishes on everything else. It is single payer time and was designed to be from the start. Get used to it Comrade.
Also, the “Silver Plan” pays subsidies for deductibles and co-pays, and it also caps total out-of-pocket costs each year at a much lower level.
The “Silver Plan” is essentially open to the lower income groups and will be paid for, in theory, by the unsubsidized higher income groups.
Like this in the UK
130,000 elderly patients killed every year by ‘death pathway’, claims leading UK doctor
by Thaddeus Baklinski Thu Jun 21, 2012 10:02 EST Tags: euthanasia, patrick pullicino, uk
LONDON, June 21, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - An eminent British doctor told a meeting of the Royal Society of Medicine in London that every year 130,000 elderly patients that die while under the care of the National Health Service (NHS) have been effectively euthanized by being put on the controversial Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP), a protocol for care of the terminally ill that he described as a “death pathway.”
3.2 million think there is ‘no point’ saving for old age as it will be swallowed by care bills" More than three million middle aged and retired people have effectively given up saving for their old age believing there is “no point” because it will only be taken away to pay for care, research shows.
Britain’s biggest charity working with elderly people warned that the Government’s long-awaited overhaul of the care system, currently before Parliament, will fail if large numbers of people simply abandon saving for later life.
Age UK said that the new system, which will cap the amount people have to pay for care in their lifetime, relies on people being able to make a contribution to the cost and could be thrown into crisis if too many people turn their back on saving.
The system, based on the recommendations of a landmark Commission chaired by the economist Andrew Dilnot, is due to come into force in just over two years time.
It will introduce a theoretical £72,000 cap on the amount anyone has to pay for their care in their lifetime, overhaul the system of assessing whether people are frail enough to need care and prevent those who do have to pay having to sell their home.........."
There was another thread today about a feeble-minded dude who won the lottery to the tune of $500/week for life. With the help of "friends", he figured out how to convert his winnings into a lump-sum payout of 403,288 minus tax withholding. As you might guess, he managed to blow more than half the payment before a judge intervened. But, since he was a ward of the state all along, he's now in danger of losing the rest!
It all has to do with income (unless you’re among the privileged few, such as government officials and members of certain unions) and I think this was just another one of Obama’s ways of punishing people for succeeding. Obamacare is a backdoor to “income equality,” so that even people who do work and do achieve a reasonable standard of living now find this “excessive” income taken away from them and redistributed, while at the same time finding that even though they are paying more, their expenditure is buying them less, they are getting fewer benefits and their care will soon be no better than that of the average Medicaid clinic patient. Instant equality!
Of course, this does not touch the more equal animals at the top (the pigs in the WH, for example).
Sensible conservatives assumed that people who profit even from overpriced insurance with weak coverage would buy it, while those who stand to lose money but are needed to subsidize others would choose not to obey FedGov. Apparently, to some moron in the newsroom, this is "unexpected".
The federal Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, excludes undocumented immigrants from being able to purchase health care through the new marketplaces states created for selling insurance. After the federal health care program is completely rolled out, experts predict that 3 million to 4 million people in California -- many of them undocumented immigrants -- will not have health care.
Some California counties offer health care to undocumented immigrants, but access varies around the state. Lara aims to make health insurance available statewide, but has not yet announced exactly how the goal would be achieved. Neither a bill number nor a cost estimate were available Friday.................
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