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FM
Former Member

Obamacare is failing. And there's only one way to fix it

Robert Laszewski, president of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, LLC

Supporter for the Affordable Care Act

Aetna's pullback from the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) Insurance Exchanges is another bad omen in a growing list.

Throughout the controversial history of Obamacare, Aetna has been a stalwart continuing to voice confidence in the future of the program.

That confidence took an abrupt and sudden turn this week when it cited unsustainable losses as the reason it was cutting back from 15 states to only four. Aetna reported Obamacare losses of $200 million in just the second quarter and more than $430 million since January of 2014. They expect full-year exchange losses of $320 million in 2016 alone.

Most disconcerting was Aetna's report that their losses have gotten worse recently.

The architects of the new health law built into it a three-year program to help cushion early insurance company losses as those previously unable to gain coverage were expected to flood into the program at the start. By year three, they assumed, the risk pool, and the prices the participating insurance companies charged, would begin to stabilize.

But that hasn't happened. With each successive annual open enrollment the tendency of the sickest to buy coverage while the healthiest hung back has only repeated itself.

2017 will be year four for Obamacare and the picture is not pretty and getting worse.

The fundamental problem with Obamacare is that the health insurance plans carriers are selling are so unattractiveβ€”with their still high premiums even after subsidies, ever larger deductibles and narrower provider networksβ€”that only about 40 percent of the exchange eligible population has signed up. The longstanding insurance industry rule is that 75 percent of the eligible must sign-up to get the enough healthy people in the pool to pay for the sick.

"Until we are willing to have a conversation about how to fundamentally change a failing program Obamacare is just going to continue to deteriorate."

My own marketplace experience matches that of Aetnaβ€”the risk pool is getting worse not better for many other participating insurers.

Aetna isn't the only major insurer to retreat from the insurance exchanges.

Humana and UnitedHealth Group have also announced that they will be exiting most of the states in which they currently sell ACA exchange plans.

In states across the nation, insurers are raising rates by double digits and insurers are citing Obamacare as the reason for layoffs.

Of the original 23 Obamacare not-for-profit health insurance co-ops funded with federal tax dollars, four more have recently failed taking the total number of insolvencies to 16.

Still, some Obamacare supporters are in denial.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Kaiser Family Foundation president, Drew Altman said last week, "We will have to see the 2018 increases to determine whether it is a short-term correction or a longer-term problem."

In the New York Times last week, Linda Blumberg of the Urban Institute said, "We have to be realistic,' noting that some large companies may not be nimble enough to succeed, 'You can't lower costs without breaking some eggs."

Said, Kaiser Family Foundation senior vice president Larry Levitt in the same article, "The market is sustainable but with a different mix of plans," that offer more narrow provider network Medicaid-like plans and some remaining Blue Cross Plans.

Hillary Clinton has discussed making the current unpopular Obamacare health plans more attractive by providing working class families with more tax credits to cushion the big deductibles and co-pays, introducing a government-run public option to compete with the insurance companies, and allowing those age 55 to buy-in to Medicare. But none of these ideas stands a chance so long as there is at least a Republican controlled House of Representatives.

Republicans also need to drop their unilateral Obamacare "repeal and replace" demands and get real about what is possible.

Obamacare has insured millions of peopleβ€”particularly in the states that have expanded Medicaid (albeit a currently unsustainable program in its own right) and it has been attractive to the poorest that get bigger subsidies and lower deductibles in the exchanges. But Obamacare has been an utter disaster for the working and middle class that seem willing to buy the unattractive plans only if they are sick and can come out ahead on the deal.

Until we are willing to have a conversation about how to fundamentally change a failing program Obamacare is just going to continue to deteriorate.

That won't happen until supporters end their denial and Republicans admit they can't turn back history.

 

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From today's NY Times editorial

Editorials, Op-Ed and Letters | EDITORIAL

The A.C.A. Will Survive Aetna’s Retreat

Kari
Demerara_Guy posted:

Now Baseman, your views on the two articles ??

Mr fly-catcher and his usual hogwash.  fact of the matter, even employers in NY recently said Obamacare has negatively impacted hiring and the costs has escalated to they kept employee hours below 30 hours per week to avoid coverage.  Even the State of NJ empoyees have seen a 30% increase in their portion of premium costs.   Imagine this on a private enterprise.

fact is, everyone in the Liberal media covering Obama's sores so he exit high and someone else will have to deal with his mess and get the blame.  Obama's focus on his welfare constituancy has given us Obamacare where he screwed up the 95 % to cater to his 5%.

Apart from Obamacare, there is not much to show for eight years, now that is trouble!

FM

The Fed Sees Mid-Income Jobs Finally Rebounding

Today's N Y Times Business Section.

The American economy is finally creating more middle-income jobs, according to a new analysis released Thursday by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, in a turnabout from the feast-and-famine pattern earlier in the recovery, when hiring was strongest at the bottom and top of the wage scale.

The findings suggest that it may soon be time to retire a familiar criticism of the long but lackluster economic rebound that has been underway since the end of the Great Recession in 2009: the hollowing out of the American middle class.

Between 2013 and 2015, employers added nearly 2.3 million workers earning from $30,000 to $60,000 a year, primarily in fields like education, construction, transportation and social services. That was roughly 50 percent more than in either the high-wage or low-wage categories during the same period.

By contrast, the Fed researchers found, of the nearly 7.6 million jobs created from 2010 to 2013, only about a fifth fell into the middle-tier category, with the largest number instead coming from lower-paid sectors like food preparation and health care support.

β€œThe tide has begun to turn,” said William C. Dudley, president of the New York Fed. β€œFor the first time in quite a while, we are seeing gains in middle-wage jobs actually outnumber gains in higher- and lower-wage jobs nationwide.”

 

 

========================================

I will post the rest of the article on a separate thread as thsi is an important juncture.

 

Kari
ba$eman posted:
Demerara_Guy posted:

Now Baseman, your views on the two articles ??

Mr fly-catcher and his usual hogwash.  fact of the matter, even employers in NY recently said Obamacare has negatively impacted hiring and the costs has escalated to they kept employee hours below 30 hours per week to avoid coverage.  Even the State of NJ empoyees have seen a 30% increase in their portion of premium costs.   Imagine this on a private enterprise.

fact is, everyone in the Liberal media covering Obama's sores so he exit high and someone else will have to deal with his mess and get the blame.  Obama's focus on his welfare constituancy has given us Obamacare where he screwed up the 95 % to cater to his 5%.

Apart from Obamacare, there is not much to show for eight years, now that is trouble!

Is that so, Baseman ??

FM
ba$eman posted:
.??

Mr fly-catcher and his usual hogwash.  fact of the matter, even employers in NY recently said Obamacare has negatively impacted hiring and the costs has escalated to they kept employee hours below 30 hours per week to avoid coverage.  .

1.  Health insurance costs were increasing at 20%+ prior to Obamacare.

2.  Costs for individual insurance were in excess of $1,000 for an individual, so that people, too young for Medicare, had to stay in jobs that they hated just for access to cheaper insurance.

3.  The ACA isn't just the exchanges.  It provides the overall regulatory framework for health insurance.   Now explain to me how many Americans hate the fact that insurance companies cannot put lifetime limits on what they would pay, refuse to cover some one because of prior illness, that adult kids can be included in their parents' health plans?  Because if you get rid of Obamacare that is gone.

Now explain to the folks here that what the GOP want you to do is to buy insurance from some state which allows the sale of sloppy plans.  They also want to stop employers from offering health insurance by disallowing deductibility of the premiums.

Baseman I know that you don't understand anything that I wrote as all you know how to do is to parrot what the FOXKKK TV network spreads.

FM
ba$eman posted:
.

Apart from Obamacare, there is not much to show for eight years, now that is trouble!

What did Bush do in his 8 years apart from turning Clinton's surplus into a massive deficit and creating almost no jobs?  The fiscal year for his last term ended in 2009 so you have to include the budget deficit in that year as well.

I am no shill for Obama.  He is just another mediocre president, NOT the disaster that Bush was.  To scream that Obama was worse than Bush, or worse than a President Trump would be is nonsense.

Look at how Trump is having heart failure because naked Trump rubber dolls are being put up.  He knows that his manhood is as small as his hands, and his  hysterical that this fact is now public.

FM

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