Health Care Law Recasts Insurers as Obama Allies

New York Times ^ | November 17, 2014 | Robert Pear

[tired&retired]

WASHINGTON — As Americans shop in the health insurance marketplace for a second year, President Obama is depending more than ever on the insurance companies that five years ago he accused of padding profits and canceling coverage for the sick.

Those same insurers have long viewed government as an unreliable business partner that imposed taxes, fees and countless regulations and had the power to cut payment rates and cap profit margins.

But since the Affordable Care Act was enacted in 2010, the relationship between the Obama administration and insurers has evolved into a powerful, mutually beneficial partnership that has been a boon to the nation’s largest private health plans and led to a profitable surge in their Medicaid enrollment.

The insurers in turn have provided crucial support to Mr. Obama in court battles over the health care law, including a case now before the Supreme Court challenging the federal subsidies paid to insurance companies on behalf of low- and moderate-income consumers. Last fall, a unit of one of the nation’s largest insurers, UnitedHealth Group, helped the administration repair the HealthCare.gov website after it crashed in the opening days of enrollment.

[kearnyirish2]

I see; reminds me of why our emergency rooms are closing up. Required to treat any and all, with diminshing reimbursement from the state for the non-payers...

[randita]

Grubamacare was supposed to alleviate the emergency room situation because more people would have insurance and with it, a primary care physician. Another broken promise.

Many doctors are refusing to treat Medicaid patients because they lose money so there aren’t enough doctors (or the doctors are not conveniently located) to take on all those Medicaid patients who have been dumped onto the system.

So we’re back to square one with Medicaid patients clogging emergency rooms which puts a financial burden on small, especially rural, hospitals.

Liberals hate rural America and through their policies, aim to drive us all into big metropolitan areas where we don’t own property, can’t practice self defense, can’t afford cars, and can be easily corralled and controlled. Dictating health care choices is one piece of that puzzle.

[kearnyirish2]

I understand about the rural hospitals; what happens in the urban ones is that illegals use the ER as we would use a visit to the doctor, and nobody ends up paying the bill (that is why hospitals in cities are folding).

You’re right about libs and rural America; they oppose the idea that people are responsible for themselves, and don’t need government for much at all.

[randita]

what happens in the urban ones is that illegals use the ER as we would use a visit to the doctor, and nobody ends up paying the bill (that is why hospitals in cities are folding)

Grubamacare was supposed to fix that by placing all those uninsured people on Medicaid rolls or giving them coverage at little or no cost to them so they would go to a doctor and not the ER.

But more and more doctors are not taking Medicaid or Grubamacare patients because they're not getting paid either. So they end up at the ER.

Some improvement.

[kearnyirish2]

I used to work for a club where we regularly received medical bills from Hispanics using our mailing address as their home address; they were never going to get paid. Not surprisingly, our emergency room has closed. The remaining ones in neighboring towns are inundated with Hispanics.