Yet Another Installment of ObamaCare “Good News”
Well, we have more “good news” about that wonderful Federal law called the Patently Pathetic Accumulated Conglomerate of Asininity Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, AKA “ObamaCare”.
I’ve written before about issues with ObamaCare health care cooperatives – and again here. And I’ve also written about how some insurers were starting to abandon the ObamaCare market.
Well, it seems another ObamaCare domino toppled yesterday. Aetna – the nation’s 3rd largest health insurance provider – has announced that they’re largely pulling out of the ObamaCare insurance exchange market as well.
This year, Aetna offered ObamaCare plans through government-run exchanges in 15 states. Next year, they’re cutting back to a whopping four states: VA, DE, IA, and NE. They’re pulling out of the ObamaCare exchange market everywhere else – though they’ll still offer individual health insurance plans in some or all of those states.
This is significant. Earlier this year, Aetna was among those saying it was “too early to give up on” ObamaCare insurance exchanges. Apparently they changed their minds.
Why? Simple: they’re losing their butts financially.
This year, Aetna had a 2nd quarter pretax loss on the ObamaCare exchange market of $200M. They’ve lost $430M since those markets began in 2014. Losing that much money – as well as losing money consistently over time – isn’t exactly conducive to staying in business.
But don’t worry, folks. Dear Leader will explain to us how we’ve misinterpreted what’s going on here. We just need to give it more time, and it will work as desired!
Yeah, right. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union spent just short of 69 years trying to perfect their brand of command-driven economic socialism. The idiotic concepts on which their cockamamie theories were based were no closer to being viable on day 25,198 than they were on day 0.
ObamaCare will fare no differently. It’s similarly based on ideology-driven idiocy that ignores economic reality.
Category: "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves", "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Health Care debate
Shhhhhhh, but it’s well intentioned.
As I sit here across the river from the insurance capital the lights do seem a little dimmer as of late.
Starry-eyed idealism never ceases to amaze me. I always wonder what it is those people are smoking, and where they get it. And do they ever come out of that fog of delusion?
I read some place that some doctors are going back to making house calls for minor things like colds, flu and baby catching.
Most of them don’t care because they aren’t effected by it. Obamacare is for peasants. The elitists in Hollywood and DC have their own deals for medical coverage.
This klown krew just found out that unlike all the other laws that they have ignored, economic laws don’t just go away.
No, their heads are still stuck up their fourth point of contact, and they refuse to believe that economic laws are any different.
I’m thinking part of Aetna’s decision making process also has to do with their defense of the lawsuit brought against them by the US government to block their merger with Humana. With the government trying to block their business model it hardly benefits them to take the shitty exchange rates and cut their losses. Why help the government when the government is intent on fucking you? On another good news note, Baystate Health Systems is projecting a $75 million dollar hit to their budget as the US government continues to “control” costs by lowering reimbursements to community hospitals. It’s an interesting concept really, the government has budget over runs on almost every project they are involved with indicating they have no fucking idea how to actually control the costs of doing business in any sector. But their answer to medical costs is to just pay less than they used while demanding more people are seen no questions asked by urban trauma ERs. Some hospitals respond by closing their ERs, it solves the problem of shitty reimbursement rates for the hospital for those people who still don’t really have any insurance beside whatever government issued horseshit policy they have. Of course closing ERs means some people now travel well over an hour in an ambulance and die on the way instead of being treated in minutes as they were previously used to receiving care locally. But hey, who really gives a flying fuck about some urban area dead people? Not the democrats certainly, BLM protests are arranged for a kid who points a weapon at the cops and refuses to put it down, but they are notoriously silent about all the dead and wounded in the larger urban areas of Chicago, Detroit, Baltimore, Los Angeles, etc… Yep the ACA has been a real fucking boon for the USA. One more example of what happens when you elect a no experience freshman senator as your president. We’re about to elect another short time senator with zero executive level experience to the white house and we’re hoping as a nation we’ll somehow have… Read more »
All is going according to plan.
Dear Leader and Dear Leaderette have started talking about a “public option.”
That’s the next step to totally government run health care.
It’s the Frog in the Pot strategy.
Yup designed to fail. Then they can swoop in and “save” everyone with the single payer health care system that they wanted all along.
Yes, situations like this make it apparent we need to move toward single payer……
VA Healthcare has been turned into the trojan horse for single payer health care. You can bet all those VA union leaders are salivating over the thought of those bonuses at their new jobs managing the single payer system.
No, Joe. As bad as this abomination is now, it’s far better than you’ll ever see through any single-payer government run healthcare.
If you want a preview, think healthcare provided with the speed and quality of customer service you find at your local DMV office; the reliability of a Yugo running on bad gas; and with healthcare as available for the masses as TP is today in Venezuela.
Our DMV office is incredibly fast, friendly and efficient. Average wait time is probably around two minutes.
Sure it is, Joe. Sure it is.
http://denver.cbslocal.com/2015/02/11/dmv-waits-longer-than-ever-despite-assurances/
I just spent 2 1/2hrs in mine to renew my CDL. Got it in the mail today and they didn’t add my hazmat endorsement that I paid for so its back there again tomorrow to lose another 1/2 days pay
Fairly typical in my experience for DMV work.
That’s also about the wait you’ll have under single-payer medicine to make an appointment – which will be scheduled for sometime during the next six months. If you’re lucky.
Fast compared to what? Continental drift?
Gee, like the successful TennCare single payer system? Or perhaps Kansas and Vermont?
Take a gander at Article 69 in Colorado, then picture it nationwide.
But no one in Colorado should need doctors for anything. Marijuana is legal. As I hear it, Marijuana is a cure for everything.
Yes, because nationalizing 20 percent of the economy is going to work out SO well.
If we do that, where will the Canadians go when their system fails them yet again?
And if you think the VA sucks, multiply that shit by about 100. Literally.
John Roberts is a traitor for calling it a “tax”. He should be disbarred for it and kicked off the supreme court. Hopefully Trump will win and Roberts will resign in disgrace.
They need to stop fining poor people for not wanting obamacare. That’s a travesty.
Trump better not fall for a single payer system. If he does he won’t make it past his first 4 years in office.
Hate to break the news to you sunshine but he said he supports Universal, that is one payer, government run healthcare ala Britain. Another thing the Trumpers are putting their fingers in their ears and screaming TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP so they don’t have to hear the truth
But one thing Trump does want to do which could be a health care positive is allow vets to use any hospital that receives fed money instead of relying on only the VA.
Odd how he and the Dems foisted subsidies and bailouts on this abortion and timed them to run out just as he is leaving office letting the next guy deal with the implosion. Most likely a bet the next President won’t have the guts to fold the tent up and declare it the disaster it is
Under the single payer system, you won’t have a choice of plans or carriers, any more than you do with Medicare. There is supplemental insurance through Medicare Part C, to cover whatever A&B don’t cover, so you have to ask why is this necessary in the first place? Right now, Medicare Part D lets vets substitute VA prescriptions for Part D. As we’ve seen so frequently, the VA boondoggle is not the health care providers, it’s the clerical people. Some are good, and some are just there for the paycheck. And with unions protecting them, they are difficult to fire, as we all know. I did a little digging to find out how many people are employed by the health and P&C insurance industry, both direct providers and agencies, and here’s an article showing the statistics on employment for both property/casualty and health insurance areas. http://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/industry-overview In 2015, per the Insurance Information Institute, direct insurer (carriers) employees totaled 1,475,000 and agencies/brokerages 2,545,000. These are people who will be put out of work under the single payer plan. Now, having worked as a licensed broker in P&C coverages, I can think of nothing more disastrous than an idiotic notion that a single payer program or platform can possibly provide the same level of coverage or response that industry carriers can provide. Without any real program in place, managed by people with experience in the insurance industry, it is a complete disaster waiting to implode. The mess that is being left behind by bodaprez, who is nothing but a carnie shill in my opinion, is going to land squarely in the lap of whoever gets the job in the Oval Office next. Trump might be able to straighten it out, even if he has to butt heads with the entrenched idiots in Congress – not so very different from Illinois and Dan Madigan, FWIW – but shrillary? She’s so damned incompetent that if she continues to follow the plan as prescribed by her predecessor, not only will more people NOT get routine medical care when they need it, more and more will… Read more »
And just like Obamacare, none of the DC elite (or Hollywood elite) will have to deal with “single payer” systems. They’ll all have exemptions to “if you like your doctor, well you gave my campaign a shitload of money, so you can keep your doctor.”
Just the same as the California legislature that voted to exempt themselves from the new tougher gun control laws Jerry’s Kid Brown signed recently.
Very good write-up though, thanks for posting this.