The death spiral continues to accelerate. Over the next few days it will become official that in addition to United Healthcare, Scott and White, Aetna and Humana are exiting the health marketplace in Texas due billions of dollars in losses with no legislative fixes in sight. United will no longer sell plans at all Aetna will continue to offer plans, just not on healthcare.gov and not eligible for a susbidy Scott & White will continue to offer Bronze plans off exchange, but no subsidy Humana will potentially offer plans in a limited number of counties throughout the country Memorial Hermann already refused to sell on healthcare.gov, but they will essentially end their own PPO for 2017 The last big shoe to drop is Blue Cross which has yet to formally announce its plans.
It looks like liberals are already moving on. Their next pitch is single payer. I want to believe all the good stuffs they promise, however, it is really hard to give them the benefit of doubt after this Obamacare fiasco. I am supposed to save thousands more instead of it is just the opposite: I am paying thousands more and my eyes hurt just seeing those sky high deductibles.
What is the proposed alternative in the "repeal and replace" plan? Health insurance costs were already spiraling out of control before Obamacare
Sucks. I'd like to see some constructive repairs, but most of Congress is delighted to see the marketplace struggling, which is pretty messed up.
The problem with the system is that people that actually need healthcare are using it, and the insurance companies are losing money. The republicans are ecstatic because they rather see Obama be wrong than help the American people. Obamacare is going to fail in its current form unless they do something to curtail cost. Unfortunately the republicans in congress are doing everything in it's power to see it fail.
Smoking gun? Aetna threatened to quit Obamacare if the government blocked its Humana merger http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/
That is a shockingly bigoted remark. I wish I could say I was surprised to see it coming from a leftist such as yourself.
The Republicans are not doing anything to "make" Obamacare fail. It is doing that entirely of it's own accord, just exactly as a great many people predicted in substantial detail before it was passed and certainly well before it was implemented. You people need to learn to start taking responsibility for your actions. The only way this ever passed was by a breathtaking series of flat-out lies, corruption and payoffs on the floor of the US Senate, broadcast right out in the open for all the world to see. This fiasco is on Barack Obama and the Democrat left, and literally nobody else. This is on you guys. You own it.
This is an incredibly simplified version of what is going on. People hitting up emergency rooms are the biggest problem.
This happened exactly as the detractors said it would. The worst part is that the people who supported it are never gonna learn any lessons from this. They will do whatever mental gymnastics they have to convince themselves they didn't get it wrong. I expect lots of 'At least we tried' or 'it failed cause of obstructionism' So many people where screwed over by this law and its supporters can't even be honest with themselves. Its so disheartening reading some of the supporter's responses in this thread.
Yup, I'm screwed again. After last year's BCBS fiasco (there were no doctors taking it) and scrambling to get Aetna in February. The system failure does seem fairly predictable, everyone that had medical issues they couldn't afford to address without insurance will immediately address them when they can get insurance. Doctors will perform as many chargeable procedures as they ethically can, and healthy young people will avoid any monthly payments they can. I don't see how anyone would have thought the plans wouldn't be a negative cash flow for the the first few years at least. The arguments about preventative care, taking routine care out of the ER, and an overall healthier society are still valid though. Killing off socialized medicine is killing off poor people, at least dooming them to live with pain and infirmity. Maybe that's what some people want. The sad thing is I found good doctors taking Aetna, who knows about 2017.
As a country apparently we are incapable of supplying healthcare for poor individuals. Perhaps in a 100 years it will become feasible.
What do you propose as a solution? Insurance is pretty simple. Its all about the central limit theorem.