Trouble with Obamacare in Minnesota
John Hinderaker reports on the withdrawal from the Obamacare market of Minnesota’s heretofore dominant Obamacare insurer, PreferredOne:
The fact that a company with 60% of the Obamacare exchange market considers the business unsustainable, even with federal subsidies, is ominous.
In Minnesota, PreferredOne’s decision will probably continue to reverberate. Individuals with PreferredOne policies purchased on the exchange will see those policies automatically renewed, unless they do something different. The catch is that, with PreferredOne no longer participating in MNSure, those people will no longer be eligible for Obamacare subsidies, so they will see premium increases”“in many cases, huge ones.
This sort of thing will keep happening for years to come. Democrats are smugly telling reporters that Obamacare is now an established fact and we should all get used to it. In reality, the law is like a series of bombs timed to go off as various deadlines kick in. Ultimately, the awful economics of the law can’t be denied. Premiums and deductibles will rise, and coverages will shrink, insofar as they are able to given the law’s expansive and sometimes irrational mandates. By 2017, when the federal government will stop reimbursing insurance companies’ losses, premiums will be far higher than when Obamacare went into effect. The Democrats apparently hope that no one will notice. To me, that seems unlikely.
Indeed, for quite some time, we’ve been treated to a series of MSM articles saying “Obamacare is here, it’s working, get used to it, the fight against it is all but lost.” I agree with Hinderaker that the law is actually a series of time bombs, cleverly staggered to go off at intervals as the public gets used to having Obamacare around.
But I am on the fence about Hinderaker’s conclusion that the Democrats are hoping no one will notice the premium rise. I think they are hoping something different: that they will be able to successfully label the premium rise as similar (and perhaps even less than) the rise that was already regularly occurring prior to Obamacare, and that in any event the people who will notice and be deeply affected by the rise will not be the majority of voters. The are counting on the fact that the majority of voters, subsidized by the others, will have become completely dependent on the largesse. As premiums rise, the subsidized voters will find the government handout even more necessary in order to obtain health insurance, not less, and therefore Obamacare would become more rather than less entrenched.
And if all else fails, there’s always single payer.
I’d say you’ve nailed it, neo.
The problem is that this weird scheme is massive enough to implode the national economy.
Even now, one by one, the nation’s retailers are announcing punked sales numbers.
They are telling indicators of a collapse in discretionary spending.
0-care also has racism built into it: Barry figured straight off that his tax would take from Whites and give to Blacks … and Latinos.
His open borders are a part of this ‘logic.’ For they are non-White and the only race to subsidize 0-care is the White race.
[There are more than enough poverty stricken immigrant Asians to offset wealthy, established, Oriental Americans.]
Barry sees everything in racial terms, first.
“And if all else fails, there’s always single payer.”
That’s always been the goal NOT the fallback, plan B option. ObamaCare was NOT constructed to succeed, it was constructed to fail in such a way that the dems and the MSM could propagandize its failure as ‘proof’ that single payer is the only way to stop the ‘evil’ insurance companies ‘greed’.
That “By 2017, when the federal government will stop reimbursing insurance companies’ losses, premiums will be far higher than when Obamacare went into effect.” is not an unforeseen bug but an essential feature of Obama’s plan to move the country to single payer.
Flashback: Obama’s Campaign to Transition to Single Payer Health Care (VIDEO)
The linked to article above, in addition to a video of Obama describing his strategy to move the country to single payer healthcare also provides quotes from Obama showing consistent support for single-payer from 2005 through 2009.
There are so many negatives facing the left this campaign season. Ocare is a bureaucratic albatross hanging around the democrats’ necks. Very few will benefit and 95% of us will pay higher rates for limited services. The gop senate campaigns also need to talk about the fact that the insurance companies will be subsidized for their loses at the taxpayer’s expense. The border crash, increased chaos and savagery in the ME, stagnant economy, worries about infectious disease, etc. have captured the public’s attention. If the gop can not win the red state democrat senate seats this year it will be their own fault.
I was in the hospital earlier this week for a routine test. On hearing my accent the nurse said that I must really miss the UK healthcare system compared to this dysfunctional US system.
She just wouldn’t believe me when I told her how bad the NHS was.
neoneocon,
You and John Hinderaker are correct, and you are more correct that the democrats don’t care, and that’s because of the most important time bomb. The way the law is structured the tyranny of numbers almost guarantees that we end up with federally controlled, single-payer coverage.
Let’s take a large employer, like Wal-Mart or Apple, Inc. A certain percentage of their employees will be eligible for premium subsidies under the affordable care act based on their income, and those employees will forego the corporate plan for an individual policy on the ACA exchange. For the sake of argument, let’s say the company has 10,000 employees and 10% opt out (the lowest earners eligible for ACA subsidies due to their income). Well, the following year there are 9,000 employees on the company’s group policy and the actuaries tell the underwriters to raise premiums because there is now more risk being borne by fewer policy holders. When those 9,000 consider the higher premiums some are now paying more than they would on the ACA exchange, so they leave. Let’s say it’s 10% again. Next year there are 8,100 employees and the actuaries tell the underwriters to raise premiums because there is now more risk being borne by fewer policy holders. Rinse, repeat…
As the risk pool shrinks the premiums climb higher and higher until even the senior executives who do not qualify for any subsidies find the company policy more expensive than what they can get on the exchange (the premium for a pool of 20 people is not much different than a pool or 1). Voila, almost all Americans are on the exchange. Like most countries with socialized medicine, there will be some very wealthy folks who still use private insurance, but 90+% of Americans will be on a government controlled plan. And if you want to see what that is like look no further than Medicaid, Medicare of the VA.
Regardless of the economic pros and cons, one, inescapable, disastrous outcome is that the U.S. is the only remaining large economy in the world that does not have a majority of its citizens on a socialized plan. When the U.S. disappears a great deal of innovation will go away. Even if the economics remain the same (and they won’t), federal bureaucrats will be determining where to spend money on research. There is a reason so many miracle drugs, medical devices and procedures are developed in the U.S. If the U.S. medical market becomes centrally controlled so much of that innovation will go away and the entire world will suffer. If all billings were at Medicare levels profits for medical device manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies would evaporate.
The real disaster of Obamacare will be the miracle drugs and devices that are never developed, or even known, due to the stifling of central planning. If the whole world is centrally planned folks think a Trabant is a decent car because there are no Teslas to compare it with.
Geoffrey Britain,
Yes, that has always been the goal, but they don’t need this attempt to fail to get to single payer. If it succeeds we also get to single payer, as I outline above.
parker, O-Care will not, necessarily be a negative. Few people vote against their self-interest and in rather short order it will be all many know. Why wouldn’t you want “free” medical care?
Panel Urges Overhauling Health Care at End of Life
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/18/science/end-of-life-care-needs-sweeping-overhaul-panel-says.html?_r=1
“The bottom line is the health care system is poorly designed to meet the needs of patients near the end of life,” said David M. Walker, a Republican and a former United States comptroller general, who was a chairman of the panel. “The current system is geared towards doing more, more, more, and that system by definition is not necessarily consistent with what patients want, and is also more costly.”
Euthanasia eugenics, it isnt just for breakfast any more!!
The panel, which included doctors, nurses, insurers, religious leaders, lawyers and experts on aging, said Medicare and other insurers should create financial incentives for health care providers to have continuing conversations with patients on advance care planning, possibly starting as early as major teenage milestones like getting a driver’s license or going to college
the death panel will hound you to death
“If you meet their needs, treat their pain, treat their depression, get them some help in the house, your costs plummet,”
take this, and never feel pain again
The $1.5 million cost of the committee’s two years of work was financed by an anonymous donor who had no control over who served on the panel or over the report. The donor recently approved additional funding for a yearlong public education campaign.
“Patients don’t die in the manner they prefer,” Dr. Victor J. Dzau, the Institute of Medicine’s president, said at the briefing. “The time is now for our nation to develop a modernized end-of-life care system.”
of course they dont, almost no one does.
did joan rivers? etc
Committee = Soviet
Neo, blert, Geoffery B: You three are so Wacist. Wascally Wacistis. Bringing Wacism to a new level.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that voters need to turn pay inequity and women’s economic security into a political movement in the November elections and beyond, pointing to an issue that could animate a future presidential campaign
equal pay for equal work
soviet style wage controls insuring that a woman who pushes a broom makes as much as a medical doctor – maybe more… as it was in the soviet union…
Rufus T firefly sez in part @4:14pm:
“Well, the following year there are 9,000 employees on the company’s group policy and the actuaries tell the underwriters to raise premiums because there is now more risk being borne by fewer policy holders.”
I do not think this is correct. IMO, the 9000 pool is a year older, and that ageing is the increase in risk. There is not more risk because the pool shrank by 10%. The per capita risk is the same, seems to me, absent any moral hazard or adverse selection in the situation. It might just be that losing the bottom 10% reduces risk for the remainder, if the 10% dropout and switch to Ocare is by people of greater than normal risk, i.e. adverse selection as far as Ocare is concerned.
Don Carlos: Premiums rise as the number in the pool decreases. Its the law of large numbers.
London: I’d appreciate an explan of that law, though I’ll wiki it. Thanks.
Got it, London. Thanks.
Rufus: I’m not 100% certain but I don’t think you can be eligible for exchange coverage or subsidies if your employer offers coverage and you work more than 30 hours a week.
Rufus T,
Only a small percentage of potential voters benefit from Ocare and they are not likely to vote in the midterm election.
London-
I doubt that 9000 or 10,000 are “large” enough numbers for that law to apply, whether or not premiums are increased with a 10% drop in the insured in this example. There are of course other reasons to increase premiums.
parker, I’m referring to prospects in the long run. It was the same with social security and medicare initially. Then, eventually, it’s all most people know and they became untouchable, 3rd rails that all too many people view as “free.”
Don Carlos and London Trader, I used simple numbers to explain what will happen.
Do you realize how many large corporations were in favor of the ACA? Why do you think that is? What about large pension plans, like GM? They know they can use this to shift their obligation to provide medical insurance to retirees to the tax payers. The ACA pool will get bigger and bigger and the private pools will get smaller and smaller. What about all the states going bankrupt from pension obligations to teachers, policemen and firemen?
This is how it is designed. There is even videotape of Obama and others explaining this “boil the frog” method prior to his first election.
Rufus T,
In the long term no one escapes reality. Not even progressives. And reality is a mother ukfer.
Rufus T:
Yes, the insurors and some, not all, large corps. favor Ocare. The insurors like the bailouts and that the law forces policy buyers on them as customers. The corps that can lower their employee health insurance costs are happy, as they properly ought to be, since these cost savings drop to their bottom lines. Neither sector is acting irrationally or malevolently.
That Ocare is amoral with its IPAB and its Medicare slashing, while Medicare enrollees increase substantially, in order to increase Medicaid funding and Medicaid enrollees is understood by some, but not the LIVs who luv Our Great Emir, Hussein al-Hawaii, and who will get third rate care from the third-rate medical mills and from the academic medical centers. So it goes….
The way it’s REALLY working is that the polity is being generally led to believe that 0-care is actually kicking in.
It’s NOT.
Essentially all of the taxes are being delayed. They, during this phase in period, are being funded by the general fund.
Further, at no time is the general public, nor the Press, brought up to speed about the tremendous restrictions being imposed upon outlays.
Only the insiders are privy to the figures, but in general terms, 0-care is expected to roll back medical wages/ incomes — by slicing the salami.
Such baby-cuts are to always be kept below the level of a Press sound bite. They are always to be couched in complexities. It’s a craft well known in insurance circles.
On the whole, the grand scheme is to cut off the magnum expenses associated with end-of-life medical intervention. It’s a fat target. It’s also a White target.
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There is a HUGE race-centric shift in mortality statistics. This is due to the fact that Blacks live faster lives than Whites.
Blacks evolved in an r-selected environmental niche. The only DNA that survived reached puberty early, at least 30 months earlier than Whites.
I’ll provide two, high profile examples:
LeBron James and Kelly Olynyk.
Both are NBA super-players.
I suspect that both are headed straight to the Hall-of-Fame.
James was a man among men even as a teen. If he were tele-ported through time and space back to west Africa, he’d be a super chieftain, no doubt.
Olynyk was a string-bean even in college. He didn’t even top out until he was a freshman in college. He didn’t even bulk out until three-years latter, still. His adulthood lagged that of James by at least 60 months.
Everyone in my extended family reached adulthood very late in life. And everyone in my extended family figures to live dang near forever. My ancestors lived into their nineties — a century ago. The exceptions all suffered various traumas.
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This racial shift has vast national policy implications when the two populations are folded together as if they had the same mortality statistics.
It certainly has not escaped Barry’s notice that Blacks scarcely dip into Social Security. The typical Black male simply dies too soon.
Other racial differences are vast: impotence and diabetes run at near universal levels for elderly Black men. A Black male commonly has the vital statistics of a White male fifteen years his senior.
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Generations back, a UCI biologist K-selected fruit flies: he sexed the critters — and would not permit mating until very late in the life span of a normal fruit fly.
They lived fast and died young… until the professor played god. Within 20 generations he was able to DNA shift his population (K-selected) into Olympic achievements. His ‘crew’ could survive brutal treatment and snap back: oxygen starvation/ cold punishments/ … the works.
They were also able to out muscle all other fruit flies.
THAT’S how powerful K-selection can be — and how quickly. The legacy of the Ice Ages morphed the White races into K-selected reproduction.
Ashkenazi Jewry has taken this to the extreme. Stupid Ashkenazi teens quickly find that their dating prospects are dismal. (I’ve seen this first hand — in my old high school.)
Now that the College Board (SAT) has sifted the youth cohort for brains, we’re witnessing a drastic K-selection shift across ALL races.
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But the existing population — now forceably blended in the statistics — is going to make all medical outcomes — on a national-statistical basis — loaded with political import.
In this regard, America is TOTALLY unlike the other socialized medical-government complexes.
You can take it to the bank that the experts will take from those naturally long living to give to those who are r-selected to bred early and often — yet die young.
It’s a slow motion race war over the generations, pure and simple.
Because none of the relevant statistics and science can be admitted to, any rational discussion can’t even begin.
I left out one critical detail. The ONLY K-selection performed was for age. Only old males were permitted to mate with old females.
ALL of the other attributes shifted as a consequence.
No explicit effort was ever made to push for super strength, etc.
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The professor’s working theory is that the DNA controls energy flow within cells — and the body. And that the ability to live long entirely correlates to a DNA shift that vectors energy and priority towards repair — generally.
All of the astounding results turn on the ability of the flies to repair cell damage — up and down the scale.
This DNA driven ‘choice’ is contrasted with pouring energy into reproduction — making new (fly) copies, instead of repairing cell tissue.
This would be termed r-selection.
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The real story of Black DNA is that Blacks missed out on the Ice Ages. They straddled the equator.
The only races that were trapped during the Ice Ages were the White races.
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Which gets to another point: There were multiple White races, multiple Black races, etc.
Lacking DNA knowledge, our ancestors over simplified what evolution had caused.
It’s only now becoming apparent that entirely separated pockets of humanity merged to become the White race. Further, that the term Caucasian is entirely erroneous — and, to the surprise of most, is actually a very recent term.
The Black races are actually numerous, the most numerous, in fact. What is taken to be tribalism by non-Blacks is actually a racial barrier that has separated Blacks from each other for countless millennia.
And the San (Bushmen) absolutely do not consider themselves as being of any Black race. They are simply: the San. DNA establishes that all of the Black races are daughter races of the San, but they don’t much like each other. Intra-Black racism pre-dates the existence of the White races, apparently. They got to dis-liking each other tens of thousands of years ago.
Only non-Blacks lump them together.
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Near as I can tell, up until pretty recently, the human population — globally — was so low that all of these races could stay separated for countless generations — and start to evolve based upon local selection pressures.
The transition back to constant cross-racial communication seems to have been much more recent than one might think.
The Polynesians didn’t really cross connect with anyone until the last three hundred years. They are a case study in dispersal.
Primitives were discovered in Papua New Guinea as late as forty-years ago!
Even the Greeks were astonishingly clueless WRT the existence of India — circa 300 BC. That’s a pretty big thing to lose! Even Aristotle was fooled.
These facts are all ‘tells’ that genetic mixing didn’t begin to occur at any tempo. Mountains, oceans, and deserts really did permit co-evolution to occur for countless generations. The few souls that crossed those divides had no significance, genetically.
It is only in our time (last twenty generations) that all of the races are in contact.
It’s been a rough go.
As Barry Soetoro shows, we have a lot more rough sledding directly ahead.
Don Carlos, I’m sure you know that employee funded (supplied, subsidized) health care was an outcome of FDR’s wage freezes. Prior to that it was not common for folks to associate medical insurance with their employer. Few companies want to be in the insurance business. Many smaller companies opposed the ACA because it mandates they must provide coverage if they have more than 50 employees, but most companies larger than that would love to get out of the insurance game, especially the very large companies.
For the record; I am no fan of the ACA. I think it is the final nail in the coffin of this Republic (sorry, Mr. Franklin, we couldn’t keep it!), but facts are stubborn things.
Just as FDR shifted the conversation so it became natural for insurance to be coupled with employment, BHO has shifted the conversation so it will soon be natural for insurance to be coupled with government.
Welcome to socialism.
blert, I believe when high school students hundreds of years hence study the period from 1970 – 2000 the most significant event, by far, will be the mapping of the human genome. The implications to the future are huge. Most of us don’t think of it much in our daily lives (just as the average Scotsman probably didn’t think much about Maxwell’s experiments with electricity) (“what use is a baby?”), but that achievement is likely to alter the lives of our posterity more than anything else in recent history.