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."
I empathize with your friend.
I lived my first 40 years in south Florida and have had 4 skin cancers.
There is an acute shortage of dermatologists in many parts of the country.
Most medical specialists depend on federal funds for their advanced training after Medical School.
Essentially, there is an artificial quota imposed on how many dermatologists are trained each year.
On top of that, unless you raise hell like your friend did, they make you get screened by a physicians assistant before they will give you an appointment with a dermatologist, even if you have a history of skin cancer.
Healthy young people will simply not enroll, driving premiums even higher.
Obama is patterning himself after Roosevelt...even the rhetoric is the same.
Roosevelt wanted as many on the dole as possible to ensure votes...that’s why he stretched the depression out purposely. Obama is going for the same thing.
Keep for later use!
Be careful how you cry chicken little.
You are sounding remarkably like any "progressive" (read communist) who insists that the only solution to the failure of government is more government!
Wrong, wrong, wrong! Let it fail, repeal it in toto and the free market will rebound so fast it will make your head spin!
That's horseshit, my friend.
If we willfully destroy the health insurance industry, only the government will be there to pick up the pieces.
Our objective should be the survival of the industry and the full withdrawal of the government.
bfl
we have to somehow get ourselves exempt....that or get off the grid if we can and have little income...
or move...or die I guess...
no one speaks for the working/middle class....we have no representation at all....
the rats treat the assembly line unionists like gods and they better not think others are going to take the fall....
I guess if we're fool enough to do it....
however now, they'll be in the "system" and their free for all ER visits demanding drugs will be carefully recorded....
they think they have it better now, but now, they'll have to go to a very limited number of drs, perhaps across town, and be limited in the kinds of drugs they'll be prescribed, and the number of ct scans etc....
however now, they'll be in the "system" and their free for all ER visits demanding drugs will be carefully recorded....
they think they have it better now, but now, they'll have to go to a very limited number of drs, perhaps across town, and be limited in the kinds of drugs they'll be prescribed, and the number of ct scans etc....
Several years ago, Oregon expanded its Medicaid services to a system very much like ObamaCare.
Oregon claimed, just like ObamaCare has claimed, that demand for Emergency Room services would go down dramatically when everyone had insurance.
What happened?
New people who were enrolled in Medicaid INCREASED their E.R. visits by 40%!
It’s a little easier than it was in the Ceausescu days. In order to monitor everyone’s conversations they had to install “improved” telephones in each home. Now the NSA handles that centrally.
No okie, its not horse manure.
It is exactly as stated.
YOU go ahead and defend piling on even more government and along the way defend obamacare.
The heath insurance industry is already gone- obamacare isn’t insurance at all.
I will simply sit here and laugh at your ignorance
Z, in our own state (I believe you are in Washington also; correct me if wrong), that really didn’t happen in general when Medicaid rolls increased in 2008-2009. However, a small number of individuals were notorious at racking up excessive numbers of ER visits — some practically every day. The state implemented a plan to limit non-emergency ER visits to 3/year. But this was thrown out by a court I believe and the limit policy was dropped subsequently. The state now tries to vector those patients to urgent care clinics and/or mental health, whatever is appropriate.
My understanding of Medicaid here, before ObamaCare, was that only children, pregnant women, SSI Disability, and people waiting for a Disability decision were eligible.
In other words, no able bodied adults qualified for Washington state Medicaid, regardless of income.
Under ObamaCare, if I'm correct, all adults and families who earn less than 130% of the poverty rate (so, below $15,000 for a single adult) qualify for Medicaid.
For several years before 2014, Oregon's Medicaid was income based, too.
It was those people, the “new” people in Oregon on Medicaid, who dramatically increased their ER visits.
Same as Oregon, a few years ago Washington dropped the asset test for healthy adult Medicaid qualification and raised the income limit. How do I know? They sent us a letter saying we were being evaluated for it and had to do nothing but wait for a decision. There was nothing whatsoever we had done to request that. We didn’t qualify, because the money I have to withdraw from the IRA for living expenses was in excess of the limit for our family size. But they tried!
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