More trouble for BO's special package I see. That's not counting the anemic enrollment for this year. BO's legacy keeps on taking the hits. What say ye? ObamaCare was supposed to be on a roll by now, promising 20 million signing up, low cost and stable premiums. Turns out its on a roll all right. Its rolling towards the cliff. Insurance giant Aetna (AET) has joined a growing number of insurers warning that the ObamaCare exchanges are failing in just the way critics said they would. This years anemic enrollment wont help. Bertolinis warning comes after UnitedHealth Group (UNH) announced that it might pull out of ObamaCare entirely next year, after getting hit with a $475 million loss in 2015. It expects to lose another $500 million this year. Last fall, CEO Stephen Hemsley said that we cant really subsidize a marketplace that doesnt appear at the moment to be sustaining itself. That, he said, basically is an industry-wide proposition......snip~ http://www.realclearpolitics.com/20...hat_obamacare_looks_unsustainable_375551.html
More on this from IBD. And Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina, meanwhile, expects to lose $400 million on its first two years of ObamaCare. It was able to get rate increases in the state that averaged 32.5%. Thats not to mention the fact that more than half of the non-profit insurance co-ops that ObamaCare created have since failed. This, by the way, is precisely what ObamaCare critics predicted would happen. Guaranteeing insurance coverage to everyone, no matter how sick, and charging those with preexisting illnesses artificially low rates, provides an enormous incentive to cheat. States that had tried these reforms ended up creating premium death spirals and wrecking their individual markets.....snip~ http://www.investors.com/politics/e...owing-chorus-warning-about-obamacare-failing/
The individual mandate was never going to work with the piddly penalties imposed. Though what's most ironic about it is that it was promoted as the conservative alternative to the Clinton Plan back in the day. And yet its shortcomings are hailed as indications that conservatives are right about healthcare. Well-played, special interests. Poorly-played on the part of moderate Obama.
Even with the "bailouts" Obama promised these Companies on their "exchange policies, they are losing? Not sure I believe that given the majority of these policies pay little to nothing compared to the premiums people are paying for deductibles so high they can,'t meet them and their co-pays and are paying out of pocket for the majority if not all of their individual and families health care. And, many employer group health insurance covers only what HHS required, not surgical or inpatient care. The coverage was better prior to PPACA. The average deductible and out of pocket lower. Obama care has been a disaster and is only getting worse. Especially for lower income middle class who don't qualify for a subsidy cause they earn too much OR too little. When they earn to little they are told to apply for their States Medicaid. But if the States program wasn't expanded, they don't qualify because they earn too much. These people still don't have insurance. If they are due a tax refund, the IRS can subtract the " tax penalty" for an refund due them. What a joke, the very people it was suppose to help are the ones getting screwed. And the employers are offering poor insurance or if less than25 fulltime employees canceling their group health leaving their employees to find their own insurance. Have you noticed the huge number of new " emergency medical busineses? Why? Because there is an increased demand for emergency care.many hospitals lose money on E.R patients poorly insured or uninsured and these private emergency facilities mostly require payment upfront.I could go on and on with examples of real situations where patients are unable to use their insurance.
Well then, Aetna and its 30% 'administrative mark-up' ought to get out of the business. As soon as possible before we have to bail them and their 30% administrative mark-up out. So should every other health care insurance company. That 30% would be better spent buying health care than buying homes in the Hamptons, lavish parties, and Gulfstreams. Buh-by Aetna.
ObamaCare was always intended to be a transition to single payor. Obama has been far brighter than his opposition - alas. Rubio, the stopped clock, is right about Obama.
exactly, the individual mandate was a conservative idea and a compromise Obama wanted a public option "Obama, GOP's Snowe work on health care compromise" http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/02/health.care.compromise/ "The compromise plan would lack a government-run public health insurance option favored by Obama, but would leave the door open to adding that provision down the road under an idea proposed by Snowe, the sources said."
There is only one way to reduce the cost of healthcare; reduce illness. This country spends a ton on healthcare and we are only getting sicker. That means that the current method is not working. One might say "Sure our healthcare system is making people sicker, so why not expand and make it up in volume?!!" Prescription drugs in their prescribed doses kill twice as many people as are killed by guns. The only solution will involve preventing illness to begin with.
Well it certainly seemed designed to collapse. I never understood why if you were counting on young, healthy people to subsidize Obamacare group exchanges, you would exclude people under 26 from participating by allowing them to be covered by their parent's non exchange, employer plans. That's just dumb. IF the idea was was to make workable exchanges.
The idea has always been to destroy private healthcare. That usually ends with crappy government care for the masses and very expensive private care for the wealthy - a two tier system.
Ah.....more trouble for BO' special package. Imagine that. November Surprise: Obamacare Rate Hikes to Hit Just Before Election..... The new, more transparent reality is that many Americans will learn of their new premium increases just before heading to the polls in November. The Washington Examiner's Philip Klein has the details: In trying to stave off a challenge from socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has whole-heartedly embraced Obamacare, promising to build on it. "Before it was called Obamacare, it was called Hillarycare," she has been saying regularly on the campaign trail. She'll own Obamacare and its problems going into the general election assuming she's the nominee, and according to the schedule put out by HHS, insurers who wish to participate in Obamacare will have to submit their initial rates in the late spring. After back and forth with HHS over the summer, they'll start to become finalized in the fall. That means for months leading up to the election, voters are going to be hearing more and more about staggering rate increases coming in 2017. And this year, open enrollment when individuals shopping for insurance can start to go online and see the premiums on new plans -- begins on Nov. 1, or just one week before the election. This means that for the months, weeks, and days leading up to the election, the Democratic presidential nominee and all of the party's Congressional candidates are going to have to contend with news of sky-rocking rates coming from Obamacare as insurers struggle to make the business profitable. Considering that Republicans owe their current House and Senate majorities to Obamacare, this should be a scary thought for Democrats. For many consumers, the worst part of this raw deal is the sticker shock of unaffordable out-of-pocket costs that must be paid out before insurance coverage even kicks in. The New York Times reports: Deductibles and other forms of cost-sharing have been creeping up in the United States since the late 1990s. A typical employer health plan now asks an individual to pay more than $1,000 out of pocket before coverage kicks in for most services. The most popular plans on the Affordable Care Act exchanges require customers to pay several times as much. Even Medicare charges deductibles...The other problem with high deductibles is the obvious one: Many Americans simply do not have the savings to afford them. In partnership with the Kaiser Family Foundation, we recently conducted a survey of Americans struggling with their medical bills. A substantial fraction of them could not pay their deductibles and were left with tough choices about how to cut thousands of dollars from their household budgets to pay for health care. For those people, deductibles often seem like an unfair trick, or a feature that makes insurance worthless. More than 3,000 readers wrote us about that medical debt article, many deploring high deductible health plans that had put them in financial distress......snip~ http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guyben...te-hikes-to-hit-just-before-election-n2115446
My son who is 29 years just got insurance through work and he has a $5,000 deductible to meet before insurance starts paying. This isn't the exception to the rule, this is the new norm for many people. To pass a law that says we must purchase insurance without actually being able to obtain healthcare is pure extortion and masses should be mad as well.
It, unfortunately, does seem to be becoming the norm. I've had the high deductible plan for years because the other plans were simply too expensive...that is, if I was also going to be able to raise a family and put two kids through college. It's a hard choice sometimes.
I wondered about that, too. My son falls into that category. He is under 26 and his job doesn't offer insurance because of the size of the company. I kept him on my insurance even though he is married. However, he has to buy insurance for his wife and kids. It is still cheaper to keep him on my insurance for now since it is still an employee & child policy as opposed to him paying for himself on his wife's policy. Actually, I need to clarify. He DID have insurance for his wife through the exchange. The plan she used went away as of January 1 this year. The other one she could get, her OB/GYN doesn't accept. And she had just found out she is pregnant. Soooo, guess who has to pay CASH for the pregnancy? Yep. My son is having to pay cash. Before the exchange was available we could not find an individual policy that had maternity coverage. So I was actually glad she could get insurance through the exchange that would cover a pregnancy. Hah, so much for that!
Ppaca law provides for an 80\20% loss ratio, and for groups with more than 50 employees the ins.co. must spend 85/15%. The lower percentages represent all costs other than payouts and money spent on other medical things, like studies. Not sure where you get the 30%.
Um, that was the system before the ACA. The wealthy always have had better healthcare and health outcomes in case you never noticed. Union members used to not do too badly but union busting has pretty well taken care of that.
Aetna's problem with the ACA is due to the increase in taxes they have to pay the government for being allowed to participate on the exchanges. According to Aetna's financial report on the internet for 2014 Aetna had to pay the government 298 million for the ACA re-insurance contribution in 2014. They also had to pay 605 million for the ACA non-tax deductible health insurer fee. Aetna has over 23.5 million members insured under them. 39% are fully-insured while 61% of their members belong to a self-insured employer where they only receive 5% of the total premium cost per employee while the employer keeps the rest of the premium in a bank account of the employer. They have approx. 1 million that have Medicare Advantage, 462 thousand that have a Medicare supplemental policy with them. They have approx. over 2 million that are on Medicaid that Aetna administers too.
Do you want some cheese with that whine? Unions are part of the problem and one of the reasons healthcare plans are dictated by employers.
Really. Have you ever participated in an actual contract negotiation with a union. I have and I can guarantee that healthcare was a major focus and hardfought on both sides.
Unions have the right negotiate fringe benefits on behalf of employees Source: Inland Steel Co. v. National Labor Relations Board. United Steel Workers Of America, C.I.O., et al. v. National Labor Relations Board; United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit. "...pension and retirement plans constitute part of the subject matter of compulsory collective bargaining under the Act." September 23, 1948. Writ of Certiorari Granted January 17, 1949. 170 F.2d 247 (194 "Following the 1949 Inland Steel decision by the Supreme Court, pensions became a mandatory bargaining topic and the subject of nearly all collective negotiations." Source: www.nber.org/chapters/c7131.pdf‎ So, yeah, unions helped to disenfranchise Millions of Americans, cutting them off from health plan coverage.
