[Intolerant in NJ]

Why Obamacare Cannot Succeed...because of the fifteen percent of the population which didn't have insurance previously and were the excuse for this fiasco, most could have had insurance if they wanted it - they were either eligible for Medicaid and hadn't signed up, or could have afforded insurance but hadn't signed. These healthy types still won't sign, while the Medicaid eligible obviously are joining and those who were so ill previously that they couldn't get insurance are also signing up - thus the most needy and sick, who will require lots and lot s of funding, are the one flooding the program, while those relatively healthy who don't need insurance, but were being counted on to provide funding for everybody else, are still avoiding it - the need for more and more funds will skyrocket and eventually the program and/or the country will go bust - the seeds of its destruction were contained in its own creation.....

[Organic Panic]

It was never meant to work. Obama hi’self admitted such.

[Theodore R.]

It can succeed by government declaring it a “success”.

[supercat]

1. The lifting of lifetime caps on benefits: The insurance companies never did this because they cannot calculate what their potential outlays would be in the future to be able to estimate what should be properly charged to policy holders. They are shooting at an unknown and moving target. They now have no choice but to jack up premiums to cover the potential costs.

A fundamental difficulty with health insurance as compared to other forms is that it is expected that insurers for cars, homes, etc. all have fixed worst-case obligations. If someone crashes their car in a fashion which would cost $15,000 to fix, but the car was only worth $2,000 before the accident and the damaged wreck is worth $500 as salvage, the insurance company won't be out $15,000, but only a tenth of that. Requiring car insurance companies in such situations to pay the $15,000 repair bills would make insurance vastly more expensive.

That having been said, health insurance has sufficiently poorly defined casualty events (e.g. if someone switches carriers, the new carrier will often be on the hook for on-going expenses stemming from conditions that developed while the old policy was in effect) that the way lifetime limits are implemented doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense.

[Gene Eric]

Obamacare is largely an EO.