Friday, June 19, 2015

Your can't provide actual insurance without making a profit

So play-like entities called co-operatives running on your tax dollars and not the least bit concerned with showing a plus number on the bottom line inevitably go the way of the Edsel and New Coke:

Ominous signs are proliferating among 22 Obamacare health insurance co-ops of imminent financial collapses that could leave more than a million Americans without coverage, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group analysis.
What do you think?

All but one of the federally funded co-ops are experiencing accelerating net losses. President Obama’s signature health care reform program established the co-ops to provide non-profit competition to private sector health insurance providers.
What do you think?

Many of the 22 co-ops could soon follow an Obamacare co-op that defaulted earlier this year, suffering $163 million in operating losses in a single year. That collapse left 120,000 customers without coverage on Christmas Eve.

This is Greece-level running on fumes:

New figures compiled by Miller and Marie-Grace Turner, president of the Galen Institute, show that net losses for the co-ops reached a record $614 million in 2014. Both AEI and Galen are Obamacare critics.
What do you think?

The figure is nearly three times the $234 million in losses suffered through the first three quarters of 2014 as reported by Standards & Poor’s in a February 2015  report. It means that the burn rate for the experimental Obamacare co-ops is quickening.
What do you think?

“All but one of the co-ops,” S&P noted, “reported negative net income through the first three quarters of 2014.”
What do you think?

Insurance ratings firm A.M. Best also warned in January that as of September 30, 2014, “the ratio of surplus notes outstanding to capital and surplus exceeded 100% for all of the co-ops.”
What do you think?

Arizona’s Meritus Mutual Health Partners co-op has long-term loans that are nearly 1,000 percent of the value of its capital and surplus, according to A.M. Best.

Just wow.

This is what always happens when you try some cutesy alternative to normal-people economic activity.

You have to charge enough for your product to cover cost.  There is no alternative.  The money has to come from somewhere. 


Co-Opportunity slashed prices and offered very low, below-market premiums to attract new customers.
What do you think?

The low premiums came at a cost. Co-Opportunity’s ratio of costs to premiums was 140 percent. That meant that for every dollar it collected in premiums, it had to pay out $1.40 in medical claims.
What do you think?

The ratio is not much better among the other remaining co-ops.  According to Scott E. Harrington of the University of Pennsylvania’s Leonard David Institute of Health Economics, “The ratios for the first three quarters of 2014 produced “a total ratio of costs-to-premiums of 116 percent.
What do you think?

“Most co-ops’ weak operating performance is a result of high medical claims,” concluded S&P, adding, that the medical costs were “hopelessly high” for many of the co-ops.

Memo to Pubs preparing for a King v Burwell decision that reads the law as written: Don't propose anything that distorts the market value of a policy.  That goes double for anything they're crafting to fil the void should they ever be able to repeal the entire monstrosity.

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