So then we should look at what the people that use the ACA are reporting now:
The two parts I bolded are an important contradiction. It doesn’t work if everyone knows which one of you is going to need the money. If Joe Bloggs is an impatient idiot who runs stop signs and texts while he drives, nobody else benefits from being stuck in a risk pool with him, because we all know he’ll be taking more than his fair share of the money because he’s an idiot who keeps crashing his car. Unless you charge him an equally massive amount of money for his preexisting condition of being a dumbass, the best possible thing for anyone not named Joe Bloggs to do is to leave the risk pool rather than continue to subsidise his incompetence.
True…but our sense of fairness goes against leaving people to lose their homes because they can’t pay for surgery, just because their mother and grandmother had cancer, so there’s a known genetic predisposition…and so they can’t get insured.
Refusing to insure people who are at a higher risk violates our democratic ideals. It’s penalizing someone for something they never actually did.
Taking their money and then refusing to pay would, you might think, be absolutely illegal, but that’s happened too.
No, we should ask Americans overall what they think of ACA. Those paying the freight get a say as well as those benefitting.
That’s not what “democratic” means. If you openly proposed legislation to expand single-payer health cover for the purpose of subsidising people who are at higher risk of health problems, and people supported it, that would be an act you can rightfully say is in tune with our democratic ideals. (and it would be legislation that I would support) Trying to sneak it in under a false name in a nine hundred page brick and voted into law by politicians who didn’t even read the thing, that is what violating our democratic ideals looks like.
I remember dealing with this issue before, what I found is that Conservative sources always forget to report that while most of the people are skeptical most do actually want to see the law either maintained or to modify it. Less than a majority do want to see the act completely repealed.
Another thing that me and many progressives noted, a good number of the people that oppose the ACA actually want to see something even better, skewing the numbers of people that oppose the ACA and many from the right wing media just think that it means that the people are opposing the intervention of the government in health care. Wrong.
More likely, I think you’re opining from the top of an ivory tower and you don’t really know how the broader world of insurance and risk works outside the redoubt of employee benefits.
And now, Aetna: Aetna latest insurer to question Obamacare’s future
Aetna’s stock price has more than tripled since ACA passed. According to Senator Elizabeth Warren Aetna’s threat to stop participating in ACA exchanges is just a blackmail-like ploy — they want DOJ to drop its antitrust objections to a proposed merger.
Is Warren an authority whose opinion should be accepted without question? Of course not. But who is more trustworthy, Warren or Aetna executives? Only a fool would even ask the question.
I strongly disagree. Nobody will pay more for insurance than they have to, and private health insurance will cost more than single payer. As soon as most Americans actually have a choice between the two, there will not be enough demand for private health insurance to justify it existing at all.
Elizabeth Warren is an ideologue. She’s considered trustworthy by her fellow ideologues.
Fact is that at this point every major carrier has announced that they’re losing money on the exchanges and are pulling back. The notion that it’s all some sort of bluff is well into wacky conspiracy theory territory.
Turns out Aetna wasn’t bluffing either: Aetna will leave most Obamacare exchanges, projecting losses
Yeah, I was about to post that in my thread over in elections. You’ll never see me feel sorry for a health insurance company (lol), but this is unfortunate for people who will have reduced options next year. This is why, long term, these marketplaces will need to incorporate a public option so that there will always be at least one carrier in every part of the country.
I do think that Aetna’s decision has more than a little to do with the DoJ lawsuit, however, given that the company was singing a different tune vis-a-vis the ACA not too long ago. Whatever.
Analysts have suggested that it had to do with it but in the exact opposite manner as Warren suggested. Specifically, that Aetna wanted to pull back all along, but didn’t want to announce this while their merger application was still pending, for fear of ticking off the Obama administration.
In any event, the emerging picture seems to be that the Blue Chip national insurers are all not doing well. The niche insurers who specialized in Medicaid and the like - with very narrow networks of low-cost providers - are the ones who are making it.
That does not bode well for the future of the exchanges. The Obama administration is apparently concerned and looking to tweak things. Not sure how much flexibility they have, though.
I wonder if there are already zip codes now (or starting next year) where either only one company is offering plans, or where nobody is offering plans? Does the penalty get waived in the latter case?
NPR said that there was one that will have no plans next year. I seem to remember the implication that there are already areas with only one plan now. I’m not sure if there will be a penalty or not. This is however, only exchange plans: customers would presumably still be able to purchase Obamacare-compliant insurance from non-exchange insurers.
This is why it was so important to have a public option initially and such a travesty that it was dropped. Done correctly, it would have been a means of a natural progression toward a single-payer system that co-existed with the private system for those able and willing to pay for higher levels of coverage or faster access to elective services. If the efficiencies of single-payer created an environment in which private insurers just couldn’t compete, what can I say except that they wouldn’t be missed.
Sadly, I also believe that both the fundamental concept of single-payer and the necessary regulatory infrastructure to allow it to operate efficiently are not achievable in the present political climate. That’s the world of Bernie Sanders and the sociopolitical values of non-US western democracies, not the world of Donald Trump or even that of Hillary Clinton.
I feel so sorry for them.
Aetna Reports a Dark Spot from Obamacare, but it’s Not the Whole Story.
Rising Premiums Appear to Have Had an Impact.
United Healthcare is Doing Well, Too.
They’re Not Really Giving Us the Whole Picture, are They?
Greedy jerks.
The public option is the only thing that will provide meaningful competition to insurance companies. I hope we get it soon and get insurance companies out of the picture as much as possible, but it will be a fight. They’ve been consolidating since the ACA passed. I believe they mean to become too big to fail, after the fashion of the big banks, to ensure their profits.
Committee for Economic Development Report.
Proposed Consolidations Could be Hazardous to Nation’s Health (Opinion Piece).
Oh noes, a corporation is making profits, can’t have that.
Look, if the ACME company had an XYZ Widget division that was losing money with a negative 3-4% margin, ACME would drop that line of business as well.
How is Aetna any different?
The way it works with Spain’s 17 is that each provider only submits claims to their local single-payer; the central exchange and bilateral agreements cover people who have been treated “away from home”. For example, distant Andalusia and Navarre share through the central system, but neighbors Aragon and Navarre have direct agreements.