Posted on 02/16/2017 11:14:45 AM PST by SeekAndFind
During his weekly press conference Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan announced a bill to repeal Obamacare would be introduced next week. “After the House returns following the Presidents Day, we intend to introduce legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare,” Ryan said. He added, “It has become increasingly clear that this law is collapsing.
“Look at the events that happened this week. On Tuesday another major insurance company announced that it too will leave the marketplace. In its decision, Humana cited a lack of young people signing up, a problem that has dogged Obamacare for years now.
“And then on Wednesday, the CEO of Aetna, another large insurance carrier, said that Obamacare is in a death spiral. His words…Obamacare is not simply stuck in some kind of status quo, it is getting worse by the day and it will keep getting worse unless we act. We need to rescue people from this collapsing law.”
Ryan could have actually added some things to his list of bad news for Obamacare. In a story appropriately titled “A bad week for Obamacare” Politico noted another bit of bad news. Molina insurance, which was frequently cited as an industry success story last year, now seems to be considering dropping out of Obamacare after unexpected losses:
Molina — which had expected a $60 million profit on the exchanges for 2016 — reported a $110 million loss on Wednesday, and will assess ongoing participation at a later date. “There are simply too many unknowns with the marketplace program to commit to our participation beyond 2017,” said CEO Mario Molina.
And though it didn’t happen this week, just two weeks ago Cigna indicated that it was going to review its participation in the Obamacare market for 2018 after projecting it would continue to lose money in 2017. During a conference call, Cigna’s CEO David Cordani called the marketplaces “unsustainable.”
Here’s Ryan’s full weekly press conference. His statement about Obamacare comes at the very beginning of the clip.
4. For those uninsured, medical service billings cannot exceed those billed to standard Medicare/Medicaide costs.
and the risk pools will be very expensive.
The risk pools will be very expensive. And the insurance companies will put anyone with so much as a hangnail into them.
4. Allow small companies of fewer than 50 employees to pool together to form groups, managed by insurance brokers, which can collectively take out group insurance policies. Every working person, even the self-employed single worker, would have access. People who don’t work would have Medicaid.
I hope it is satisfied, as you say, because pre-ex pools are a bad idea.
Most of the previous bills to replace Obamacare had pre-ex provisions that would essentially work like they used to do. The only difference would be a ‘final’ opportunity to purchase some kind of medical insurance before the pre-ex provision would apply to any new policies purchased after a set deadline.
Personally, I don’t think there is any longer a political solution for what ails us. We are far beyond that. Rules for such anarchists are sooooo 20th Century. They have their installed judges now, who will issue edicts over this, and any future constitution.
What we need is a thorough purging. Yes, that means civil war - not political, but bloody.
>Personally, I don’t think there is any longer a political solution for what ails us. We are far beyond that. Rules for such anarchists are sooooo 20th Century. They have their installed judges now, who will issue edicts over this, and any future constitution.
>What we need is a thorough purging. Yes, that means civil war - not political, but bloody.
Congress has the power to remove these judges. Perhaps we need to help give them will to do so.
I’m not sure “next week” is accurate in this headline. Hotair may not know that congress is in recess next week, so that actually “returns after the President’s day holiday, is a week from Monday, not Tuesday.
President Trump has said under no circumstances will he sign a bill that sunsets the pre-existing conditions.
However, although I am a perfectly healthy man, I have a very mild, asymptomatic, non-threatening atrial fib. Because of that lifelong condition, and after losing my job in 2008 (and then working two jobs part-time without group insurance), I was thrown into the pre-existing condition category and denied insurance prior to Obamacare. And I explored the pre-existing pools . . . they were prohibitively expensive relative to everything else. And I just don't like the idea of insurance companies being allowed to determine who gets thrown into that pool. So, I very much hope you are right. I have remained covered for three years, and should qualify to be covered in whatever system is put into place.
But, you know, being as healthy as I am (I run and swim) , all I really want is a catastrophic policy that covers next to nothing, but protects me if I fall off the roof or contract a fatal disease. And that should not cost me an arm and a leg.
That’s a shame. It’s probably really the only way to go to return the health insurance industry to any form of self sufficiency and capitalistic efficiency.
Coverage should not cost as much or more than mortgage or rent. Some of the plans are also looking at reducing what is considered minimum coverage. This would also reduce the costs. Obamacare is a flustercluck of a disaster. It is BS that such dreadfully inadequate medical insurance is so tremendously expensive. There has to be a better way, but the leftist dream of universally inadequate government ‘care’ is NOT it.(Not yelling at you. The very thought of an American version of NHS makes my blood boil.)
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