Repealing Obamacare

I think they should let ObamaCare collapse of its own poor construction and let the blame fall where it belongs.

The better thing to do is to just repeal it, period.

Why do we want the government writing checks to the evil insurance mega corporations? That's what ObamaCare is.

 

Republicans did nothing that caused all the health care providers to quit in many states.

I see no point in them helping it fall apart when it's doing that just fine on its own.

What's not being reported is the CBO says the senate republican plan will save $325B (about $100M more) and insures 1M more than the house plan.

Or that ObamaCare failed to cover 27M people. A massive expense and running up of the debt to insure less than 1 in 2 who weren't insured in the first place.

 

I read your spin. You do recognize spin when you see it?

The insurance companies were losing hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars while Obama was president, unconstitutionally making changes to the law (that's congress' job), and they were bailing on the exchanges.

Hard to spin your way out of that. It's called fact. Or Truth. Whichever you prefer.

 

Over the last few years, big managed care companies like UnitedHealth Group have contributed to the furor over the fate of the Affordable Care Act by saying that important parts of it are fundamentally flawed.

But Obamacare hasn’t been a curse for the managed care companies. Over all, based on their share performance, it has been something of a blessing.

Since March 2010, when the Affordable Care Act was signed into law, the managed care companies within the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index — UnitedHealth, Aetna, Anthem, Cigna, Humana and Centene — have risen far more than the overall stock index. This is no small matter: The stock market soared during that period.

The numbers are astonishing. The Standard & Poor’s stock index returned 135.6 percent in those seven years through Thursday, a performance that we may not see again in our lifetimes. But the managed care stocks, as a whole, have gained nearly 300 percent including dividends, according to calculations by Bespoke Investment Group.


UnitedHealth, the biggest of the managed care companies, with a market capitalization that is now more than $160 billion, returned 480 percent, dividends included. An investment of $100 in the company’s stock when Obamacare was signed into law would be worth more than $580.50 today.

“If Obamacare has been bad for the managed care stocks, why have they performed so well under it?” asked Paul Hickey, a founder of Bespoke Investment Group. “And do they really need to be rescued by Congress?”

The answers are complex but boil down to this: Basically, several analysts on Wall Street and in Washington said, the underlying businesses of the big managed care companies have actually done extremely well under Obamacare. They have run into some problems but are hardly in need of a rescue.

The companies have notched profits — from expansion of Medicaid, for example, and from services aimed at cutting medical costs — while learning how to insulate themselves from parts of the law that have crimped their income. They have diversified, earning money from businesses that include data management, outpatient clinics and surgical services, as well as traditional health insurance.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/18/business/health-insurers-profit.html

 

This is from 2016, before the election and before Trump could have any effect on ObamaCare.








What a shitty insurance plan.

$1000 for a 50+ year old couple and $13,000 out of pocket before you get much benefit.

For $1,000 a month, you can buy all your prescriptions at market rate, your labs, your doctor visits, etc., and still have lots of money left over.

All you really need is a catastrophic care plan to cover the big bills over $13,000 and you come out WAY ahead.

 

Health insurance industry rakes in billions while blaming Obamacare for losses
Major insurance companies are enjoying record profits but claim they are losing money under the Affordable Care Act


Record profits
But the claim that corporations are losing money on Obamacare ignores the record-breaking profits and compensation packages that health insurers continue to collect.

Consider UnitedHealth, the nation's largest health insurer that is leaving the marketplace next year. UnitedHealth claims that Obamacare has reduced its 2016 earnings by $850 million. While they might have $850 million less than they wanted, UntedHealth’s profits are still soaring.

In fact, UnitedHealth announced record-breaking profits in 2015, followed by an even better year this year. In July 2016, UnitedHealth celebrated revenues that quarter totalling $46.5 billion, an increase of $10 billion since the same time last year. And company filings show that UnitedHealth’s CEO Stephen J. Hemsley made over $20 million in 2015. To be fair, that is a pay cut. The previous year, in 2014, Hemsley took home $66 million in compensation.

"If you look at our Proxy, the Board lays out in extensive detail, in great detail, the thinking behind both CEO and executive compensation,” UnitedHealth executive Don Nathan tells ConsumerAffairs.

“At his request, Mr. Hemsley’s total compensation is below the median for CEOs in the Company’s peer group,” the proxy statement says, “even though the Board believes his performance has been outstanding."

In other words, Hemsley is far from being the only health insurance CEO making millions of dollars every year.

Sky-high profits
Aetna, whose CEO Mark Bertolini reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission a $27.9 million compensation in 2015, has similarly celebrated sky-high profits. “In 2015, we reported annual operating revenue of over $60.3 billion, a record for the Company,” Aetna recently told investors.

Aetna spokesman T.J. Crawford wrote a brief statement to ConsumerAffairs describing the company's losses under Obamacare: “As updated on our Q3 earnings call last week, we now expect a 2016 pretax loss in our individual products (on- and off-exchange) of approximately $350 million,” he said via email, otherwise directing questions to a company press release.

Thanks to the insurance industry’s combination of record profits in recent years and increasing premiums, people on both sides of the political aisle have criticized the Affordable Care Act as being more beneficial to the insurance industry than consumers, though politicians remain deeply divided on what a good, viable alternative would entail.

“Given this dysfunctional reality under the ACA, it’s remarkable that neither major political party has a plan to truly fix the situation,” wrote Dr. John Geyman, a professor and past president of Physicians for a National Health Program, a nonprofit advocating for a single-payer national health insurance program, in a recent column.

https://www.consumeraffairs.com/new...hile-blaming-obamacare-for-losses-110116.html

 

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