Aetna and UHG exit the individual health insurance market in California, rather than deal with the mandates in Obamacare’s California exchange.
The change will affect about 50,000 individual subscribers (which, when you tack on family members, stretches out to around 150,000 people.
And and it’s a sample of what’s going to happen in most other states, as private insurers, looking at expensive coverage mandates and limited revenue, dump out of the private coverage business.
Exactly as conservatives said.
He who laughs last laughs loudest – although this kind of laughing isn’t that funny.
Intended consequences
But we were promised we could keep our coverage if we liked it…… :^)
There are two reforms that can be done to over night dramatically to get health insurance prices down.
One, allow somebody to buy it across state lines. If I can go on ebay and buy something from somebody in California why I can’t I buy insurance.
Two, finally admit what is driving up the costs are all of these mandates. Life the mandates and let the person buy their own policy (after all it’s suppose to be the law).
Suddenly prices will come down as insurance companies will offer a new set of products never made available and millions of people who aren’t getting insurance will actually get insurance.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
Free market approach? Without regulations and government interference? But, but, how will Sicko Soci@list Marxist Emery and TFS survive?
“Intended consequences”
Exactly. When this plan fails miserably, stinking leftists will simply say “That’s why we need the government to take over completely.”
Just watch.
Swiftee, that might have worked before Bengazi, the IRS scandals, and the 99 other instances of epic Obamic ineptitude circulating today, but for anyone but the hardcore left the government looks pretty inept these days so it’s a hard sell to normal folks.
But inept and Democrats go together like rum and coke so it’s little surprise to the small government crowd.
Single payer has always been the objective. How many will die in this medical experiment will be left for history to interpret. Obama won’t care. He’ll have a private physician. As will Congress. And the boards of every major corporation funding his power grab.
I want the federal government out of health care.
If a state passes a bad law, you can vote with your feet if you want to.
When the federal government passes a bad law, you’re stuck.
Selling insurance in California is doubly bad now. If I understand it correctly, the state has a law that makes insurance a heavily regulated commodity. You can’t work with your insurer to put together a package you want at a price you like.
The state says all insurance has to be identical in cost and benefits.
The important thing to remember is that what you are arguing is economics and what the real debate is about is whether allowing this law sets a precedent expanding the government’s power to restrict individual liberty, i.e. going from regulating commerce to dictating commerce.
I understand that there is a desire to force corporations to pay for things that the state would rather not. But this is a tax issue and should be dealt with separately. There should also be a standardization of health plans across the industry to facilitate comparison and make switching provider trivial.
The scope of healthcare has grown tremendously and is slated to grow more. The mandated package of insurance will change over time, subject to medical science and politics. Some of it is essential to life, some is cosmetic, some is palliative. How do you draw a line around healthcare, now and forever? You can’t allow the government to draw it, or someone in the future will abuse it.
My health insurance covers abortion, acupuncture and alcoholism even though I will never need any of them, don’t want them and wouldn’t pay for them if I had Freedom of Choice.
The mandated package of insurance grows because special interest groups lobby government to require it. That’s what’s wrong with having the government run the program.
Republicans should insist on repealing Obamacare at every step. Never waiver.
“The important thing to remember is that what you are arguing is economics..”
Leave it to our resident dimwit to start a long, incredibly ignorant diatribe with a claymore of stupidity.
Listen Peni, the issue has nothing to do with economics inso far as you and your mindless ilk are concerned. The issue is control; the issue is power. Economics are simply the means to an end…the same end that every single issue leftists involve themselves in: Do what we say.
The answer from Freedom Loving Americans is also the same: Go fuck yourselves.
It’s possible to control health care spending by making the state the single payer and using that power to both ration health care and limit fees. It’s also possible to control health care spending by creating a system of subsidies of individually purchased health care. The Swiss all pay the same amount, the government subsidizes different people with different conditions differently, and private providers compete for their business by offering more and better services than the next guy. Both systems beat what we have coming under Obamacare, as they move healthcare out of the control of employers.
But my point is that you could have those two very different systems in adjacent states, and there would still be little migration because of it. Every state will have its cystic fibrosis patients, and one way or another we will all subsidize their care. I’d rather be paying for those girls next door than be paying for cancer treatments for a 75-year-old, and that’s the sort of hard choice we need to start making if we are to sensibly control health care costs.
CUT SPENDING!! Just not my benefits, or my parents’, or my children’s
RAISE TAXES!! Not mine, those other people, you know, the rich, the lazy poor, businesses.
Ask a hard question. How about: “Would you support denying cancer treatments that average less than a 3 month extension of life to Medicare patients if that would lower your payroll taxes by 5%?” That’s a practical and honest question I’d like to see the answer to, as that’s the sort of question we need to answer to keep health care spending under control.