Monday, July 25, 2016

What's the latest with the "A"CA?

It's not front and center on the national radar screen in this blazing sumer of 2016, but it is, after all, since its midnight railroading through Congress without a single Pub vote, affecting pretty much everybody's health care costs.

So how are things going?

Badly:

Count it as another nail in ObamaCare’s coffin: Humana, one of the country’s top insurers, announced Thursday that it’s pulling out of ObamaCare exchange plans in all but a few states next year.
It will offer policies in “no more” than 11 state marketplaces, down from 19. The numbers don’t add up: Humana took nearly $1 billion in losses from the coverage this year.
This follows the exit from the exchanges of such other giants as Cigna and UnitedHealth Group, also after outsized losses.
It’s the much-feared “death spiral”: Too many older, sicker folks are resorting to ObamaCare policies, and not enough younger, healthy folks. So the average enrollee is running up higher bills than the insurers expected — and raising rates will only scare away even more lower-cost customers.
Meanwhile, the Obama Justice Department is moving to block health-insurer mergers — including an Anthem-Cigna deal as well as Aetna’s bid to buy Humana. Why? As The Post’s Josh Kosman reports, the “move would be a blow to the president’s state-focused ObamaCare.”
The White House fears the mergers would give the combined firms too much power to set rates, limiting consumer options.
Funny: The ObamaCare law encourages lots of other anti-competition mergers, of hospitals and other providers, in the name of “efficiency.” And doctors across America are giving up on traditional independent practices — as the law pushes them to do.
And countless people stuck buying policies on the exchanges have been shocked at how limited their options — like choice of doctor and hospital — turn out to be.

Hey, post-America, how about if we try the free market?

Nah, too elegantly simple and self-evident.


4 comments:

  1. Yes, Obamacare needing reform already and if they will not, go ahead and start the repeal process, OK?

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  2. Would love to, but need solid majorities of conservatives in both chambers of Congress - a tall order in this madhouse year.

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  3. But Hillie is going for universal single payer which was their dAstarsly intention all along. They had to know the carriers would balk.

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  4. Damn straight she's going for single payer. She's hated freedom since her late teens.

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