The collapse of Obamacare

Utah still has some competition inside ObamaCare but no HMOs.
None.
Only private insurers can find HMOs in Utah.
Sad for people who need lots of specialists.
The wait for them will be very much longer.

Curt has a government healthcare plan but he doesn’t want the same for other Americans
Curt doesn’t think that all Americans should have healthcare as good as he does
Most Americans want a Federally funded healthcare program http://www.gallup.com/poll/191504/majority-support-idea-fed-funded-healthcare-system.aspx
And of course people with government healthcare plans are most satisfied
http://www.gallup.com/poll/186527/americans-government-health-plans-satisfied.aspx
Of course if they weren’t they wouldn’t be in favor of a Federal plan for all, would they?
How many who post here are NOT covered by any government plan? Vet medicare medicaid
prescription drug plan or like Curt work directly for the government?

Obamacare was a fruad from the begining if trump gets in i hope one of his first things he dose it call for the repeal of Obamacare

Gimme a break. Obamacare is not the problem, it’s the greedy insurance companies and the fact that the GOP insisted there be no caps on policies. But the loons on the right would prefer to go back to just a few years ago when insurance companies could deny coverage and let you watch family member die-or sell your house to pay for treatments.

This is, as stated above, just another step towards National Socialist health care. In case you missed it, Medicare/Medicaid just introduced a new payment scheme for doctors, purportedly based on “quality”, that physicians who accept Medicare/Medicaid patients are forced to accept.

What it boils down to is bureaucrats with little or no actual medical expertise will be setting price controls and medical practice limitations on physicians and hospitals not based on actual medical need, but on government bureaucrat interpretations of medical guidelines. If you, as a patient, are a round peg that does not fit into the square hole of government-determined medical care protocols, your doctor will not be reimbursed for your care. This is a convoluted way of hiding the government attempt at healthcare rationing.

But let all the NeverTrumpers focus on surreptitiously recorded, braggidocious locker room talk of a vulgarian in de facto support of the corrupt leftist (but I repeat myself) candidate. Just don’t expect your physician to be sympathetic when you can’t get previously available medical care because the government denies your claim.

@Bob:

mrs clinton wants to keep what is working with obamacare, exactly what is working?
Then she said the alternative was to go back(fear mongering) to what healthcare was before the unaffordable care act.

Not a bad idea, scrap what does not work, the entire plan and establish free competition among health insurance providers……

Currently, the boner in chief wants to use tax payers to bail out failing insurance companies.

Obama plans to circumvent Congress and bail out big insurers [UPDATED]

The Obama administration is set to use an obscure Treasury Department fund to bail out big insurance companies that were complicit in the president’s illegal effort to save Obamacare. So reports the Washington Post, though not in these terms. It took Christoper Jacobs at the Federalist to explain what’s really going on.

Most readers will recall that in 2013, millions of Americans received notices informing them that their existing health insurance plan would disappear once Obamacare’s major provisions took effect. President Obama’s “if you like your health care plan you can keep your health care plan” mantra was exposed as a lie.

In response, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) agreed to ignore the requirements of Obamacare and allow people to keep their prior coverage. Insurers could permit individuals who purchased coverage after the law’s enactment but before October 2013 to keep their plan for a few more months (later extended until December 2017).

But, as Jacob explains, this move, in addition to being unlawful, placed insurers in an untenable financial position. Healthy individuals kept their existing plans and stayed out of the Obamacare risk pool, while sicker individuals signed up for Obamacare in drove. Because insurers hadn’t anticipated the Obama administration’s rule change that produced this phenomenon, they had substantially underpriced their Obamacare products.

To induce insurers to maintain existing plans, CMS stated that “the risk corridor program should help ameliorate unanticipated changes in premium revenue” and that it “intend[s] to explore ways to modify the risk corridor program final rules to provide additional assistance” to insurers. As Jacobs puts it:

The administration conjured a political bailout. It pledged not to enforce the law [requiring cancellation of polices], so people could keep their plans, and President Obama could get off the hook for misleading the American people. This necessitated a financial bailout through risk corridors.

Actuaries can debate how much of the unpaid risk corridor claims stem from this specific policy change, but there can be no doubt that the “like your plan” fix increased those claims. CMS itself admitted as much when announcing the policy.

The risk corridor money has proved to be grossly inadequate to cover the losses of insurers. Several health plans have sued the U.S. to collect the shortfall. According to the Post, the Justice Department has signaled its willingness to settle the claims and, indeed, to offer payments to approximately 175 health plans selling coverage on ACA marketplaces.

The money would come from the obscure fund mentioned above, known as the Judgment Fund. In this way, the recent congressional ban on the use of Health and Human Services money to pay the insurers would be avoided. The Obama administration would, in effect, collude with the insurers by rolling over in lawsuits (and encouraging additional lawsuits in which to roll over) in order to bail out insurers

This raises the following question, posed by Jacobs:

Why should the executive be allowed to break the law [which didn’t allow the continuation of non-Obamacare compliant plans]. . .and then force. . .taxpayers to pay the tab for the financial consequences of that lawbreaking?

It is not a sufficient answer to cite the needs of insurance companies. They are not victims. Jacobs points out:

They could have cancelled all pre-Obamacare plans regardless of the president’s announced policy, demanded the opportunity to adjust their premium rates in response, pulled off the exchanges altogether, taken legal action against the administration — or all of the above. They chose instead to complain behind closed doors, get their lobbying machine to work, and hope to cut yet another backroom deal to save their bacon.

If there is, nonetheless, a case for bailing out insurers, let that case be made to Congress. If Congress finds it persuasive, the bailout can proceed.

But Congress has already rejected that case. So, in effect, the case will be made to a judge (or judges) who will be asked to approve collusive settlements between insurers and the Obama administration, to be funded by American taxpayers. Any judge confronted with such a settlement should think long and hard about approving it.

Meanwhile, congressional Republicans are doing what they can to head off the bailout. Among things, they have obtained two memo from the Congressional Research Service. The essence of both is that the fund Obama wants to use for the bailout cannot be put to that purpose.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Well, now the Obama administration reportedly has reversed itself and is contesting the lawsuits filed by two big insurers. It has filed motions to dismiss their lawsuits on Friday on the grounds that the federal government isn’t responsible for the insurers’ losses.

Why the reversal? It’s possible that the action taken by congressional Republicans, including the two Congressional Research Service letters described above, made an impact.

Or maybe the administration is trying to improve its position in settlement negotiations with insurers in the hope of obtaining a settlement it can present to the court[s] as the product of genuine negotiations in seriously contested litigation.

However, Christopher Jacobs, quoted extensively by me in this piece, calls the administration’s motions a “meaningful” development. And if the administration has really presented a compelling case that the insurers have no claim, it may be difficult to turn around and get a substantial settlement agreement approved in court.

Perhaps Team Obama has decided to let the insurance industry go down in flames as a prelude for a push by the Clinton administration for single payer.

As I said, stay tuned.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/10/obama-plans-to-circumvent-congress-and-bail-out-big-insurance-companies.php

Obamacare is as rediculous as Bill Clintons Midnight basketball always count on liberal Dumb-O-Crats to come up with these stupid ideas

@MOS #8541:

And a pediatrician receives $38 for an office visit under medicaid in my area of Texas. This is why none of the pediatricians in my town, except for the local medical school – which gets paid 1.5 times what a private pediatrician gets paid for the same visit ostensibly because of the alleged increased cost of training the residents. One private pediatrician quoted me that he was losing a minimum of $10 per medicaid patient visit when all his overhead expenses were calculated, and that was if there was no need for lab tests or imaging studies. The dirty little secret is that in order to accept medicaid patients, private insurance patients have to pay to cover medicaid losses. Add to that the much longer wait time for medicaid to actually pay the private physician, and it became untenable for the private pediatricians to accept medicaid patients.

The leftist mindset on this alternates between characterizing physicians as greedy, and the economically idiotic belief that the private pediatrician “can make up the loss by seeing more medicaid patients”. (Actual statement from a leftist debating me on the subject.)

If Hillary manages to take the Oval Office, she will continue the insanity of obamacare. Then we will see increasing MSM nonsense claiming physicians are overpaid, and louder calls for caps on medical pay. When that happens, good luck finding a doctor’s appointment without a protracted wait time.

@john:
Not according to Pew Research

http://www.people-press.org/2016/04/27/more-americans-disapprove-than-approve-of-health-care-law/modest-changes-in-publics-overall-view-of-aca-since-its-passage-in-2010/