“Today, Democrats in Congress and the Obama administration are desperate to do something you may find surprising: give the insurance companies more than about $2.5 billion in bail out money.
That’s not a misprint. They want to take tax money from people who already think their premiums are too high and their coverage too skimpy and give it to the very “villains” they were excoriating only a few years ago.
Here’s the back story. Under a program called “risk corridor” insurance, the federal government pledged to redistribute money from insurers who made profits to insurers who incurred losses for a period of several years. The reason: the insurance industry was so uncertain about the outcome of the (Obamacare) health insurance exchanges that they insisted on a backup mechanism to protect themselves.
Yet last year’s appropriations bill, largely at the insistence of Sen. Marco Rubio, requires that the risk corridor payments be revenue neutral. In other words, any payment of funds to an insurance company suffering from a deficit must come from insurance companies who earned a profit. There can be no net transfer of taxpayer funds to the industry.
The problem is that in 2014 most of the carriers lost, and lost big. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, for example, lost almost $400 million. United Healthcare, the nation’s largest private insurer announced the other day that it may pull out of the individual insurance company market altogether in 2017. For the coming year United Healthcare has announced that in most states it is ending all advertising and ceasing all broker commissions for plans sold in the Obamacare exchanges. Cigna just announced that it may leave the market as well.” - The Biggest Threat To Obamacare Is Already Written Into Law: No Insurance Industry Bailouts, forbes.com, 12/10/2016
Link to the entire article appears below:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngoodman/2015/12/10/the-biggest-threat-to-obamacare-is-already-written-into-law-no-insurance-industry-bailouts/#2715e4857a0b5f141b71712f
“Humana Inc. has added its name to the list of mega-medical insurers to report big problems under ObamaCare.
The Louisville, Ky.- based company does not expect to make enough money this year in premiums from individual plans to cover what it will pay out in claims, according to a regulatory filing made last week with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Humana, which is being acquired by Aetna Inc., said it is still trying to figure out how big the gap will be. The company did say it has set aside a premium deficiency reserve – meaning, it’s setting aside money to help make up the difference.
Humana, which will provide a deeper dive into its 2016 outlook when it releases its fourth-quarter earnings on Feb. 10, said in the SEC filing that it expects membership to drop this year by 200,000 to 300,000. The decrease reflects plans sold under ObamaCare as well as older policies.
“We expect Humana will exit Health Insurance Exchange marketplaces in 2017 in light of this data, and focus on its Medicare Advantage book of business,” Leerink Partners analyst Ana Gupte said in a research note on Friday.” - Humana latest insurer to have big problems under ObamaCare, 01/13/2016, foxnews.com
Link to the entire story appears below:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/01/13/humana-latest-insurer-to-have-big-problems-under-obamacare.html
‘President Obama on Friday vetoed legislation to repeal most of his signature health care law, saying the bill would do “harm” to millions of Americans.
The move was widely expected, after Republicans for the first time succeeded in sending an ObamaCare repeal bill to the president’s desk. The legislation that Obama vetoed also would cut federal funding for Planned Parenthood.
While Congress may try to override, Republicans do not currently have the votes to do so.
Republicans, though, say they met two goals by passing the bill: keeping a promise to voters in an election year, and showing their ability to repeal the health law if a Republican wins the presidency.
“This is the closest we have come to repealing ObamaCare,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said Thursday.
As the next step, Ryan wants to work on a proposal to replace the health care law. As he said in a statement Wednesday, the goal is to lay the groundwork for repealing and replacing the law should a Republican win the presidency this November.
“It clears the path to repealing this law with a Republican president in 2017 and replacing it with a truly patient-centered health care system,” he said. “We will not back down from this fight to defend the sanctity of life and make quality health care coverage achievable for all Americans.”’ - Obama vetoes health law repeal bill, foxnews.com, 01/08/2016
Link to the entire article appears below:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/01/08/obama-vetoes-health-law-repeal-bill.html
"The omnibus spending bill recently passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama delays the onset of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)’s so-called “Cadillac plan tax” for two years. The new law also weakens the effect of the tax (assuming it’s ever collected) by making it deductible, as noted by my Mercatus Center colleague Brian Blase. I agree with former OMB director Peter Orszag’s observation that the delay may simply be a first instance of a “rolling permanent deferral” of the Cadillac plan tax.
The tax has long been on shaky political ground and the new law considerably reduces the chances of its ever taking effect. It is worth understanding what caused the unraveling of the tax, and what lessons can be drawn from this.
The Cadillac plan tax is (was) a 40% excise tax on the amount by which health insurance plan costs exceeded annual thresholds of $10,200 (individuals) or $27,500 (families), starting in 2018. These thresholds were indexed to grow more slowly than historical health cost growth, so that over time more and more plans would be subject to the tax, producing escalating federal revenues necessary to help fund the ACA’s ambitious health entitlement expansion. A key policy intent of the tax was to offset the damaging effects of the longstanding federal tax preference for employer-sponsored insurance (ESI), one of which is to drive excess health cost inflation.
Lesson #1: Save before you spend.
Lesson #2: Don’t assume a favorable future political alignment.
Lesson #3: Be transparent.
Lesson #4: Partisan victories can be short-lived.
Lesson #5: Don’t campaign against necessary policy steps."
- Five Lessons of the Cadillac Plan Tax Failure, Economics 21, Manhattan Institute, 12/22/2015
Link to the entire article appears below:
http://economics21.org/commentary/cadillac-tax-obamacare-charles-blahous-12-23-15
“Obamacare enrollees will pay more next year, as new data found a roughly 10 percent increase on all types of marketplace plans.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation released datasets on average premiums for 2015 and 2016 on Wednesday. The data showed that every tier of Obamacare plans — bronze, silver and gold — raised average premiums by about 10 percent in 2016 from 2015.
Gold plans had the largest increase with 11 percent, while bronze came in with 10 percent and silver with just under 10 percent, the foundation data shows.” - Obamacare enrollees face higher premiums next year, Washington Examiner, 12/16/2015
Link to the entire article appears below:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/obamacare-enrollees-face-higher-premiums-next-year/article/2578518
“Americans like to think that our health care system is very different from “socialized medicine” in Canada. In fact, the two health care systems are far more similar than they are different. In Canada, when people go to the doctor the visit is free. In America, it’s almost free.
On the average, every time Americans spend a dollar at a doctor’s office only 10 cents is coming out of our own pockets. The rest is paid by an employer, an insurance company or government. Like the Canadians, we do not primarily pay for health care with money. We pay with time.
According to a Merritt Hawkins survey:
The average wait time to see a primary care doctor in the United States is almost three weeks.
In Boston (where we are told there was universal coverage even before there was Obamacare), the average wait is more than two months.
Compare that with how long you have to wait to get your cellphone repaired.
Waiting in the US is becoming more like waiting in Canada and in some cases it can be worse.” - What Everyone Should Know About Rationing By Waiting, Forbes, 11/09/2015
Link the entire article appears below:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngoodman/2015/11/09/what-everyone-should-know-about-rationing-by-waiting/
‘According to enrollment data, more than 500,000 Americans using the exchanges purchased plans from UnitedHealthcare. Those consumers will have to purchase new plans in 2017 should the insurance company leave the exchanges, Ed Haislmaier, a health policy expert at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal.
“What we’re seeing is that insurers are re-evaluating whether this is a good market to go into,” he said. “Some are expanding; others are having problems, and they pulled back. Over time, what you’ll probably see is fewer insurers offering coverage in the exchanges. We’re already seeing that, even though United expanded in 2015 and 2016, insurers offering coverage is down. It’s going to take a few years to play out.”
Compared to its competitors, UnitedHealthcare was slow to offer products on the exchange when Obamacare first went into effect in October 2013 and sold plans in just four states—Colorado, Maryland, Nevada, and New York—in 2014, according to the state-run exchanges and federal exchange, HealthCare.gov.
However, the insurer expanded its exchange coverage substantially in 2015 and 2016, selling plans in 22 states during the 2015 open enrollment period and 34 states during this year’s open enrollment period.
Competitors Aetna and Humana, by comparison, are offering coverage on the exchanges in 15 states.
Haislmaier said that insurers like UnitedHealthcare may not have prepared for how much plans sold on the exchanges would cost them.
“What you’re seeing is the market itself, and this is attributable to Obamacare, is turning out to be a market that’s predominately low-income individuals between 100 to 200 percent of the poverty line,” Haislmaier said. “They’re buying coverage, getting a substantial subsidy, but gravitating toward the low cost-sharing plans where they get extra subsidies. The enrollees have more of an incentive to use more health care, and that makes those plans more expensive [for the insurer].”
For insurers to profit from the coverage offered on the exchanges, Haislmaier said, they must narrow networks or raise prices, both of which impact consumers.
“The ones who have not narrowed the networks or have been behind the curve on pricing are having losses and reevaluating participation,” he said.’ - How Obamacare Could Limit Insurance Options for Americans in These 34 States, daily signal.com, 11/25/2015
