The latest on the failure of "A"CA:
Health insurance companies are amplifying their warnings about the financial sustainability of the ObamaCare marketplaces as they seek approval for premium increases next year.Insurers say they are losing money on their ObamaCare plans at a rapid rate, and some have begun to talk about dropping out of the marketplaces altogether.
“Something has to give,” said Larry Levitt, an expert on the health law at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “Either insurers will drop out or insurers will raise premiums.”While analysts expect the market to stabilize once premiums rise and more young, healthy people sign up, some observers have not ruled out the possibility of a collapse of the market, known in insurance parlance as a “death spiral.”One question: Why did the author feel the need to put "risk pool" in quotes? It's a pretty simple concept. You need a healthy enough risk pool to be able to profitably cover claims by the less healthy within it if the insurer is not to raise premiums.
In the short term, there is a growing likelihood that insurers will push for substantial premium increases, creating a political problem for Democrats in an election year.
Insurers have been pounding the drum about problems with ObamaCare pricing.
The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association released a widely publicized report last month that said new enrollees under ObamaCare had 22 percent higher medical costs than people who received coverage from employers.
And a report from McKinsey & Company found that in the individual market, which includes the ObamaCare marketplaces, insurers lost money in 41 states in 2014, and were only profitable in 9 states.
“We continue to have serious concerns about the sustainability of the public exchanges,” Mark Bertolini, the CEO of Aetna, said in February.
The Aetna CEO noted concerns about the “risk pool,” which refers to the balance of healthy and sick enrollees in a plan. The makeup of the ObamaCare risk pools has been sicker and costlier than insurers hoped.
The clearest remedy for the losses is for insurers to raise premiums, perhaps by large amounts — something Republicans have long warned would happen under the healthcare law, known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
“The industry is clearly setting the stage for bigger premium increases in 2017,” said Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Insurers will begin filing their proposed premium increases for 2017 soon. State regulators will review those proposals and then can either accept or reject them.
Michael Taggart, a consultant with S&P Dow Jones Indices, pointed to data from his firm showing per capita costs for insurers are spiking in the ObamaCare marketplaces.
It's the first law of economics, no matter what school of economic thought you're an adherent of: The money has to come from somewhere.
The money goes nowhere, from whence it came. Check out the meltdown of '08, regardless of who you try to blame.
ReplyDeleteIf anything has been an intentional monkey wrench it has been the ACA, one of those wink winks on the way to single pay. Both Hillie and The Bern were in full agreement about it in their Brooklyn debate. Single pay all the way. Stepping on toes that want to make hay.
ReplyDeleteHow about if we actually try the free market?
ReplyDeleteRon and Rand never got far with that proposal being pushed by Ron since at least 2008. The major concern is for the poor and elderly who nobody wants. Ya think we can find enough nuns to staff charity hospitals again these days or enough doctors to treat the elderly and indigent for free as when we were last so free?
ReplyDeleteIt might not have to work that way. Leave it to human ingenuity to find a market solution to care for those groups.
ReplyDeleteAs we know, the material advancement of the human species coincided with the great leap forward in the understanding of and practice of economic liberty.
No, we will leave it to the will of the people who you will then call clueless cattle.
ReplyDelete"The history of science during the Age of Enlightenment traces developments in science and technology during the Age of Reason, when Enlightenment ideas and ideals were being disseminated across Europe and North America. Generally, the period spans from the final days of the 16th and 17th-century Scientific revolution until roughly the 19th century, after the French Revolution (1789) and the Napoleonic era (1799–1815). The scientific revolution saw the creation of the first scientific societies, the rise of Copernicanism, and the displacement of Aristotelian natural philosophy and Galen’s ancient medical doctrine. By the 18th century, scientific authority began to displace religious authority, and the disciplines of alchemy and astrology lost scientific credibility. While the Enlightenment cannot be pigeonholed into a specific doctrine or set of dogmas, science came to play a leading role in Enlightenment discourse and thought. Many Enlightenment writers and thinkers had backgrounds in the sciences and associated scientific advancement with the overthrow of religion and traditional authority in favour of the development of free speech and thought. Broadly speaking, Enlightenment science greatly valued empiricism and rational thought, and was embedded with the Enlightenment ideal of advancement and progress. As with most Enlightenment views, the benefits of science were not seen universally; Jean-Jacques Rousseau criticized the sciences for distancing man from nature and not operating to make people happier."
ReplyDeleteRead more at wiki
If "leaving it to the will of the people" leads to tyranny, those of us who love Liberty will resist
ReplyDeleteGo ahead, Texas would be glad to have you.
ReplyDeleteI am all for civil disobedience and practice it often.
ReplyDelete