Obamacare: Democrats own it, it's on you! Fix it!!

It is the insurance companies.....

 

I can also look to the millions of people that have health insurance today that did not have it before the ACA.

 

People used (and still use) the emergency rooms as their primary care doctor, because it's free and immediate. Even those that can afford a visit to the free clinic to get the same treatment.

... and everyone who clicks the "give me a subsidy box" get's that subsidy paid for by someone who doesn't. For many of us, our premiums went up with Obamacare.



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Right! So now we pay for those that used to use the ER AND those that still us the ER. So where is win here? At this point the cost of the taxpayers just covering the ER visits then and now, although now we get to pay for all the treatment too.. You do realize that the fatal flaw in the ACA the service cost is dramatically overrunning the amount of participation!

 

Yup that's today, and you're living in the minute and ignoring what's being presented to you!

 

Can imagine a comment more irrelevant to Republicans and Trump using the birther crap then your comment

 

The Huffington Post

Why Obamacare Will Fail
THE BLOG 11/18/2015 04:32 pm ET | Updated Nov 18, 2016
By Dan Karr
Political discussion aside, The Affordable Care Act (ACA) will fail for business reasons. Whether the ultimate result is the law getting repealed or modified, change is necessary to have a viable and vibrant health insurance industry that drives cost reduction and improved customer service.

The fundamental reason the ACA will fail is because it mandates a minimum Medical Loss Ratio (MLR). MLR is the percentage of premiums paid out to cover health care expenses. When this law came into effect, many American’s thought mandating MLR was good because it guaranteed a minimum level insurance companies would pay to cover health care costs. However, the unintended consequences are having the opposite effect. The problems associated with mandating MLR are two-fold: 1) incentivizing the insurance industry to become less efficient; 2) contributing to the elimination of new insurers entering the market and increasing the level of competition.
Unintended Consequence

Taking these two points one at a time, let’s review why mandating MLR delivers the opposite of the intended consequence. The reason is that mandating MLR reduces the ability of businesses to increase profits by improving profitability (efficiency).
Take for example the need to slow or stop the rapid escalation of fees that medical service providers charge. Under this new system, cost reductions achieved by insurers driving down the cost of medical services will not contribute to the profits they earn, unless the reduction in the cost of services is matched with a reduction in insurance company overhead. While corresponding reductions in the operating cost of insurance companies — or even a slowing in cost increases — sound ideal, it’s not realistic. Therefore, the impact is a reduced incentive to control the prices medical service providers charge since these cost reductions no longer benefit the business or the shareholders.

By setting a fixed ratio of health care expenses paid to premiums earned, this new law makes increasing revenue the primary mechanism for increasing profits. As an example of how the law does not deliver the intended consequences of reduced costs, insurers are now incentivized to allow fees charged by service providers to rise, leading directly to increased revenue, and consequently increased profits. This clearly shows that legislating MLR is more likely to result in rising medical costs rather than declining costs.

Diminishing Competition
Let’s move to the second point about how mandating MLR virtually eliminates new entrants into the market. The unintended consequence of this is reduced competition, also leading to increasing prices.

New entrants break into markets by targeting market segments not already occupied by incumbents. In health insurance, the easiest market segments for new entrants to target are the individual and small group markets. This is because small group markets consist largely of emerging companies where there are no incumbent providers and the individual market experiences a high-level of churn with self-employed and unemployed people that need insurance and aren’t covered by group plans.
Startup companies typically have a younger population and therefore, much lower medical expenses. Insurance pricing laws called “community rating” mandate higher insurance prices for the risk assumed with younger plan participants. Because community rating requires higher pricing, but the risk is lower due to the younger population in startup companies, meeting MLR requirements becomes virtually impossible unless an established risk pool that includes older people already exists.
The unintended consequence is that emerging insurance companies are not a viable business and competition is again limited.

Demonstrating this second point that the ACA virtually eliminated new entrants into the health insurance markets are the early results of CO-OPs (Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans) established under the ACA. These plans were established as non-profits, giving an inherent advantage of not paying taxes. Even with the advantages of tax-free operations and receiving $2 billion in government loans, after only two short years, 11 of 23 CO-OPs have already failed. In a move forbidden for private industry, some of the remaining 12 have received permission to reclassify the loans they received from the federal government as assets rather than liabilities in order to give the appearance of meeting solvency requirements imposed by regulators.

Health care costs increasing at more than two times the rate of increase in the Consumer Price Index is a problem the U.S. has suffered for decades. The ACA clearly did not cause this problem, however, the problem will worsen under any law that mandates MLR. The solution lies in pricing and cost transparency, encouraging competition and rewarding efficiency.

Dan is the founder and CEO of ValChoice, an insurance analytics company.
Follow Dan Karr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ValChoice
Dan Karr
Founder and CEO, ValChoice

 

Why should they live in the future? The ACA is a HUUUUUGE success

 

Yes, one that doesn't include Hilary as the Woman behind the rumor

 

See #257 I hope you're not gonna call Huffy Puffy "FAKE NEWS" are you

 

We've been through this before your forgetting stuff first of all Clinton didn't start it and second of all the fact that Trump was a sleazebag enough to use the brother thing is just not relative to Clinton at all

 

No but I will call the founder of Val Choice....a company with a very special vested interest in the ACA failing

 

For your reading

https://www.washingtonpost.com/post...uth-for-its-opponents/?utm_term=.d9ffaadabccf

 

OK, hand back the White House and we'll sort it all out for you.

....waiting...

 

They WILL fix it in 2019 when Democrats have the House AND the Senate and Republicans no longer have the power to deny funding and to continue sabotaging it.

 

No, he is just daring liberals to TRY to fix it notwithstanding conservative obstruction to make them look as impotent as Republicans.

 

I thought Trump and the Republicans had promised to do that.

And why would the Democrats who liked the bill want to change it? It seems to me the people who don't like it should be charged with onerous task of fixing it and they want the changes.

No, Trump said a few hundred times he would remove it, at one point saying he would "tear it up, get rid of it once and for all."

Is it because he's too incompetent that you come crawling to the Democrats to fix what he can't?

 

It is likely a result of the fact they don't have a clue what they're doing. They've had eight years to prepare, eight years in which to gauge public opinion, talk to the experts and find out HOW best to change.....

and didn't.

Instead, they rushed headlong into disaster and are now calling for help in a way typical of bullies...demanding Democrats do their job for them.

Can't say I have much respect for that

 

The ACA was a Bi-partisan Law
The gang of 6 created the ACA framework.
It was comprised of 3 Republicans and 3 Democrats
There was no way a large nation changing bill would be created in a partisan way.
During 2009, the Gang of Six consisted of six members of the Senate Finance Committee of the 111th United States Congress who negotiated a compromise to pass a health care bill.

Democrats Max Baucus (Montana) Jeff Bingaman (New Mexico) Kent Conrad (North Dakota)

Republicans Mike Enzi (Wyoming) Chuck Grassley (Iowa) Olympia Snowe (Maine)

However it was a Partisan Vote with Specter switching parties to pass the vote

 

Well, Yes & no, to your statement,which just goes to show you how complex Health Care reform is--the whole premise of OBAMACARE was to "eventually" stop people from using the emergency room as their primary doctor by making Insurance "affordable" for "everybody"---
The reason premiums went up for everybody--I'll explain it again for the umpty-ninth millionth time---is because "some" the GOP Governors did not opt in to the medicaid expansion & denied their constituents the option for purely "political " reasons, the GOP set up the resistance for then the Insurance company's to still find loopholes for their greedy bottom line,which was to starve OBAMACARE so the GOP could then claim that OBAMACARE was a failure---The insurance companys want it to go back to the way it was before OBAMACARE & the GOP is trying their darndess to accomplish just that,problem is, the American people want a fix for Health Care Reform--
You are reading this subsidy box thing the wrong way---you are assuming that everyone that has OBAMACARE is poor & has never has Insurance before,that is incorrect-----
For example; Both myself & my husband have a job,we've had jobs for the last 45 years,we are not members of the working poor, our poverty level when we click on the subsidy button is in the high 400's, we're not rich either, we are responsible & have had Health Insurance for the better part of those 45 years,You have never had to pay a penny for me or my husband-and you still don't--By signing up for OBAMACARE in our state (Nevada,with a GOP Governor)we entered the large pool of people also signing up, which gave 'everybody" a lower premium,lower deductible & good quality health care & affordable costs. We had maybe 13 different plans if we went with normal insurance companys,but we have had a Health Savings Account for several years ,so our choices were a bit more limited,but we found one that suited us & we got to keep our doctor because our doctor opted in to OBAMACARE. We pay a $6000 deductible (which comes out of our Health Savings Account), around $4000 a year in premiums (as opposed to $10,000 before OBAMACARE),no co-pay, with 100% after deductible. Why would anybody want to pay the high premiums, the high deductibles, the co-pays, the less quality care,the 80/20 that Insurance company's offered before OBAMACARE when they don't have to?

 

Whining about trump getting similar treatment obama got is not working to make the extreme left extinct.

 

Of course not.

 

Wrong. Even though most Americans do not want the ACA repealed and replaced, that is the promise that Trump and congressional Repubs ran on.

Republicans proving themselves impotent in keeping their promise does not mean they can suddenly shirk the responsibilities of controlling the executive and legislative branches.

Can you imagine pissy Democrats, when Obama was first elected with over 51% of the popular vote, pointing to the GOP's fraudulently-pretexted, multi-trillion dollar Iraq fiasco and whining "Fix it!"?

 

Did anybody actually take Trump seriously about his "repeal and replace ACA" rhetoric?

No one that I knew (including several members of the GOP who voted for him) took him remotely seriously.

Trump "repeal and replace ACA"?

Everybody knew he never had a prayer.

 

I don't want to be obnoxious here, but you are not being consistent. Everybody cannot have both lower premiums and higher premiums... and that health care may be more affordable for some doesn't mean that some won't still opt for free if they can get away with it.

Many of us do not want to pay higher premiums, but Obamacare made the plans some of us were very happy with illegal. Forcing us to purchase more expensive plans through Obamacare. For example, it arbitrarily required insurance companies to no longer provide group plans to groups of two people if those people were married. There was no benefit gained from doing that, it just forced more people to join that pool which gave others lower premiums. People who were paying less before they were shoved into the pool.

The solution isn't forcing Jack to average his costs with Jill. Especially when his costs are much less. The solution is finding a way to deliver service at less cost. We need to worry less about the insurance and more about what is being spent to produce that service.​

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