Posted on 09/20/2016 1:29:53 PM PDT by Kaslin
The Obamacare insurance co-ops have collapsed. Of the original 23, only three are expected to survive past 2017. The insurance companies are losing hundreds of millions of dollars on the healthcare insurance exchanges. Their reaction is to pull out of a number of them in order to reduce their exposure; a process they repeatedly employ to shed under-performing products called “purging”. To make up for these losses, insurers are expected to raise 2017 premiums across the board on all policies. The Kaiser Foundation expects an average increase of nine percent for policies on the exchanges, but in the individual market, the increases will vary by state- averaging 14 percent, but may be as much as 25 percent in some markets.
People are outraged because healthcare is going in the wrong direction for most of them. This is not the $2500 reduction in healthcare premiums promised by President Obama. There are fewer insurance options, with narrower physician panels. A McKinsey study reported that there will be only one insurer in up to 1/3 of counties in the US. Patients are responsible for a greater amount of their healthcare costs before insurance pays a penny--often $6000 for individuals and $12,000 for a family. Obamacare is spinning out of control as we approach what the healthcare policy experts predicted would eventually happen: the “death spiral” of this hastily contrived government intrusion into healthcare.
It would appear that the insurance industry is on “thin ice “as the healthcare system, that they helped to turn upside down, begins to unravel. Progressives are now openly saying “we have tried to use the “free market” to fix healthcare but it just doesn’t seem to work”. President Obama is pushing for a “Public Option” to save the healthcare system and patients. This is just the inevitable next step towards a single payer (Federal government controlled) healthcare system. Hillary Clinton tried to take us there in 1993, but failed. She is talking about this again and would be closer to making this a reality in this environment.
he insurance companies are victims too, right? Not even close.
They are co-conspirators. What is taking place in healthcare is a contrivance and the insurance industry is a major player, very pleased with the results. They are reaping record profits due to changes in the healthcare insurance arena created by Obamacare; changes that their representatives helped to negotiate as they sat around the table creating the Affordable Care Act. Yes, they are losing money on the portion of their business tied to the healthcare exchanges, but in every other part of their health insurance portfolio, the profits are staggering.
It is necessary to connect the dots. The truth may be more sinister than anyone even imagines. What if the insurance industry actually wants a single payer system? Is this even possible?
First, consider that the largest purchaser of healthcare insurance is the government- federal and state. When the ACA passed, there was outrage that Medicare Advantage would be scaled back. This is the most popular and well liked part of the Medicare program by seniors because of richer benefits than traditional Medicare. Instead, the program has grown so that 1/3 of Medicare recipients are on this program. Ironically, insurance companies, through provisions under Obamacare, have figured out how to get paid more than before.
Second, the cozy relationship between the federal government and the insurance industry should be cause for concern and investigated. The former director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in the Obama administration, Marilyn Tavenner, is the President and CEO of AHIP, America’s Health Insurance Plans. This is the professional lobbying arm for the insurance industry, and the group that “sat at the table” when the ACA was being conceived. Currently, it is difficult to see any daylight between the federal government and the insurance industry. It is curious how a tax on the insurance industry amounting to $12 Billion; funds which are sorely needed to help pay for this entitlement has been postponed.
Equally troubling is the recent discovery that the issue of “risk corridors” is not settled. This was a program that AHIP negotiated to make up for losses sustained in the Obamacare exchanges. In 2014, $8 Billion was collectively paid out- a tax payer bailout of the insurance companies. Congress voted to put a stop to these payments, but the Executive branch is trying to bypass Congress in the waning days of this administration, and get more money back to the insurance companies.
When over 50 percent of the insurance company business comes from government contracts, and with insurance companies making record profits, why would they not want to go 100 percent government contracting? Their downside risk would be eliminated when the federal government is the guarantor. They can’t lose in this scenario. The only losers are patients and taxpayers.
Just an FYI-my health insurance broker (yeah, whoever thought we’d need a broker to get health insurance??) said that private insurance will be history within the year. I was inquiring about my husband getting private instead of from his employer. She said to hang onto the employer insurance for dear life. NO PRIVATE HEALTH INSURANCE?? Obama is succeeding, under the radar.
As a former health benefits examiner of Great West Life and Annuity, Portland, Oregon, before the turn of the millenium, I state:
“What took you so long to realize this???”
Did you know that:
a doctor is now followed by a billing assistant and a data recorder now. One to make sure the maximum amount is billed under the new classifications and one to record all the information in the new mandatory electronic records system?
That one type of Staph infection can be charged at a mere $3,000 to $5,000 to treat and another costs more than $20,000? That there are monitors in the hospital system that look over the doctors records to correct and encourage them to charge for the more expensive disease category?
What? Compelled contracts don’t work? A command economy doesn’t work?
Unheard of!
Yes, am aware of healthcare insurance executives who visited with this administration many times during early 2009 to actually write the ACA laws that are killing us.
Also, don’t forget the AMA had an early role in crafting Obolacare.
Everything has become Much worse for most people due to government intervention!
It was all deliberate.
“In politics, you can be sure that nothing happens by accident”
“What? Compelled contracts don’t work?”
If they were compelled, they could not back out.
At one time there was tremendous growth in local mutual insurance companies. I wonder what it would take to recreate that ..................
Stay out of Obamacare. Arrange your IRS withholding so that you owe IRS a hundred bucks in April and get educated about offshore clinics. They are much cheaper for what is or will soon will be higher quality and more timely service on major treatments. Onshore you can get one of the Christian or Ethical cost sharing plans. They are priced properly and you are not paying hordes of drones and parasites and they cut off the obamacare sharks from your bank account.
If you are healthy then get a Christian health sharing program. It’s not insurance but keeps you from getting penalized at a fraction of the cost.
They have to do that because the insurance pays them a fraction of the charge. They have to multiply the charge in order to get their own costs back plus some net income. I have Medicare Advantage and when I get my statements of costs and payments the Insurance company pays as little as a third or sometimes a tenth of the billed charge. At my annual required physical I get so much blood drawn I might as well be donating at the Bloodmobile and the list of tests can run to a page and a half. Most of them seem to have no relation to anything that might pertain to me. A doctor that accepts Medicare patients has to do that to make it worth taking them.
AARP was fanatic in its promotion of Obamacare, AARP’s United Healthcare pulled out of the “markets” this year to avoid bankruptcy. What did these people think they were getting?
The only sane way to get American Medicine back on track to cure the maximum number of diseases and be the most affordable possible is for the Federal Government to totally detach from Insurance and medicine. No regulation or requirements for Insurance. No requirements on doctors or hospitals. The only Constitutionally valid point of government oversight is the weights and measures clause which can be construed to allow the government to require honest labeling and actual truth in advertising.
Ding! Ding! Ding!
We have a winner!
You nailed it, arthurus!
And, the same applies to most other areas into which FedGov has oozed in the past 150 years...
Indeed, it does. Contributing much to the problem is that our representative democracy/republic has become much more like a popular democracy. The ratification of the 16th, 17th, and 19th Amendments is what totally changed the path of history for America. The 17th made the changes irreversible by taking the States out of the federal equation and the 19th guaranteed a majority for Big Daddy government. The 16th gave the Feds control of incomes. Any Trump presidency that intends to actually make a difference has to get rid of at least the first two of those and abolish all the government Agencies right down to the original 4 Departments. Trump can do that. I doubt he will.
I meant that we are compelled to contract with insurance companies. PPACA is illegal. I should have more clear.
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