Posted on 01/17/2012 11:03:05 PM PST by bruinbirdman
One of the most fervent promises President Obama made to the American people before his health overhaul law passed in 2010 was “If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.”
But, even before the law fully takes effect in 2014, health insurers are dropping out of markets in many states, causing millions of people to lose “the coverage they have now,” and tens of millions more surely will follow.
Carriers don’t want to leave the customers and markets they have been serving, often for decades, but they are being forced to walk away from significant investments in many states to cut anticipated losses.
Some of the carriers are leaving because of onerous state regulations, others are victims of a faltering economy, but costly new federal rules and regulations and the many more that are to come as a result of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) are accelerating the exodus.
During the debate over the health law, liberals strongly opposed giving private health insurers such a large role in expanding coverage, and fought hard to include a government-run plan. But the Obama administration may be able to achieve liberals’ goal in a different way by suffocating private plans under a mountain of regulation and choking them with impossible cost tests.
Individuals, small businesses, and people buying child-only policies are being hit in the first wave of dropped coverage.
Some examples: In New York, Empire BlueCross BlueShield said it is no longer offering health insurance plans that cover about 20,000 businesses. Mark Wagar, president and CEO of Empire, said that the company will eliminate seven of the 13 group plans it currently offers to businesses which have
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
That was the plan all along.
I work for a business with 5 employees, only 3 of us participate in the health coverage. Our premium rose to $5,000 per month for next year. Our CEO is unsettled as to what to do and the 3 employees are worried they won’t be able to afford the huge increase. All because of zerocare.
“The report found that in about half of the metropolitan markets, at least one health insurer had a commercial market share of 50 percent or more. In 24 states, the two largest health insurers had a combined commercial market share of 70 percent or more.”
Who are they?
Which ones, if any, are covering government plans?
Which ones, if any, are major bank equity holders?
bookmark
Thanks for posting this birdman...
gitmos
The laws are on the books, eh? They are dribbled out as the "Secretary" decides?
Politics is the only fight, bug man.
yitbos
“As someone who has worked tirelessly in the health insurance field since 1963 (before there was Medicare or Medicaid) I’m now fighting my government from forcing me out of this business by destroying more and more of my suppliers of quality coverage! “
Then you know the problem is much more complex than the Obama care abomination.
Nobody has any reason to work on the cost side of the equation when you can cost shift. Government cost shifts, doctors cost shift, hospitals cost shift, insurance companies cost shift, insured people in big group plans, federal plans or municipal plans cost shift, now folks who can no longer afford coverage will cost shift.
The only guy who can no longer cost shift is the guy who wants to try to pay cash, and the small company that tries to provide coverage for employees.
The system was broken long before Obamacare - but Obamacare has hastened the destruction.
I can’t even afford health insurance it has gotten so expensive.
I spent fifteen years in Germany and got a chance to notice their system, and the unintended effects.
You can call to the Doc in Germany and generally get an appointment within forty-eight hours. When you walk in....you simply present your card....nothing to be signed. You might wait thirty to forty minutes past the appointment time. Then the three nurses have six different rooms staged up with patients, and they write down your blood pressure and key issues. The Doc walks in and spends no more than three minutes in the room. You might get five questions max, and then he writes something on the notes. The nurse comes up...to finalize anything, and you walk out with a slip, a prescription, or some bandage. The Doc is only getting around 50 bucks for each appointment, so his game is to fifteen patients per hour.
Now, I admit its the wrong strategy and not likely to mean first-class care if you get barely five minutes with the Doc, but the system made it into that. But then I came to realize another odd thing. There are an awful lot of folks in the 60-to-80 year old range who show up and basically get vitamin prescriptions....not real drugs. The German system allows for vitamins to be prescribed and covered by their drug program. The doctors generally refuse to issue out real drugs unless you really have a major condition. This is a bit different in the US where you can ask for just about any kind of drug, and half the doctors are willing to give you a prescription without thinking much about it.
Our premium rose to $5,000 per month for next year.
Our local morning news had a story about a shopkeeper gong out of business. Business was down and he couldn’t afford the $600 a week premiums for health insurance, he’d have to work for someone else. I thought $2400 a month was steep.
Does anyone think that Willard is actually going to repeal this monstrosity?
It won't make any difference. By the time anyone gets around to repealing anything, the goal will have been achieved, destroy the existing system.
Yeah, and the lying POS later stated he and his cohorts in crime knew that was not true. No-one, absolutely no-one should believe anything this guy says. If he says the sky is blue, you had better look up and check.
My Tagline says it all: (Once the tainted finger of government touches anything the rot begins)
Sadly this is much like the home insurance scam in Florida. Reduce the competition and it allows the few remaining ones to essentially “charge at will”. Unfortunately mortgage companies require insurance, so we have a major decrease in spendable income per household which affects the general economy. For those of you who would say the rates are justified by hurricane exposure, consider that pool cages and hurricane damage to the extent of 2% of the home value are deductible. On a $400,000 house (lot value excluded), a typical pool cage would be around $15,000. So the first $23,000 in damage most likely to occur is borne by the homeowner. With annual premiums ranging from $2-10,000+, some homeowners have elected to drop coverage. I would expect to see the same in regard to health insurance.
This is just one more example where whatever the Government calls a bill, it really means the opposite. It is a perversion of the language, and it shows the deceit and hypocrisy that pervades government. It is real-life Newspeak.
“Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state. “
The motto of the communists and 0bamunists.
The biggest shift of all was when liberal legislators intimidated, defensive conservatives into a stampede to put into law that the entire healthcare industry would be forced to accept fee for service coverage by the government for all the older people in the nation!!!
This triggered massive inflation in healthcare which in turn triggered all the shifty shifts into a pile of shifty shifts that you so perfectly outlined!!!
Overiding point being government messin with the normal marketplace like they recently did in the area of housing which is now a horrible equity shifting business, shifting my equity into the toilet as I type this!!!
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