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Title: Taxpayers on the Hook as Obamacare Exchanges Near the Edge of Collapse
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URL Source: http://cnsnews.com/commentary/phil- ... e-exchanges-near-edge-collapse
Published: Aug 13, 2016
Author: Phil Kerpen
Post Date: 2016-08-13 09:35:51 by Justified
Keywords: None
Views: 11768
Comments: 96
The health insurance exchanges that are the beating heart of Obamacare are on the edge of collapse, with premiums rising sharply for ever narrower provider networks, non-profit health co-ops shuttering their doors, and even the biggest insurance companies heading for the exits amid mounting losses. Even the liberal Capitol Hill newspaper is warning of a possible “Obamacare meltdown” this fall. Three states – Alaska, Alabama, and Wyoming – are already down to just a single insurance company, as are large parts of several other states, totaling at least 664 counties. UnitedHealth is pulling out completely, Humana is pulling out of 88 percent of counties it was in, and last weak Aetna strongly suggested it will be exiting, too, unless it gets bribed to stay with a huge, annual infusion of direct corporate bailout payments from taxpayers. Dealing with the wreckage will be at the top of the agenda for the new president and Congress next year, and their options will be limited – especially if, as appears likely, we will continue to have divided government. Most Democrats would prefer moving toward a totally government-run system while Republicans continue to favor repeal. The most likely outcome, then, is the muddled middle, keeping gravely ill Obamacare on life support, with the major policy fight being over the extent to which taxpayers should be forced to provide billions in direct corporate bailout cash infusions. Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini was pretty blatant in a recent interview with Zachary Tracer of Bloomberg. Here’s the key part: “Rather than transferring money among insurers, the law should be changed to subsidize insurers with government funds, Bertolini said. ‘It needs to be a non-zero sum pool in order to fix it,’ Bertolini said. Right now, insurers ‘that are less worse off pay for those that are worse off.’” In other words: everybody is losing money, so taxpayers need to pick up the tab. The Obama administration is already playing fast and loose with the law to shovel as many bailout bucks to insurers as they can – on top of Obamacare’s huge subsidies to lower income consumers and a penalty tax on people who don’t buy in. They shortchanged taxpayers by $3.5 billion that, contrary to law, they sent to insurance companies instead. And their legal posture in a $5 billion lawsuit to contravene a funding restriction expressly enacted by Congress to prevent a bailout via the so-called risk corridor program amount to a promise that they will somehow get them paid in the future. Democrats will likely support legalizing these payments and authorizing even larger direct corporate bailouts on an ongoing basis as a way to keep insurance companies in the Obamacare exchanges and avoid admitting failure. Republicans will likely be attacked as saboteurs for resisting bailout payments, but that misses the point. Direct corporate welfare to bribe companies to participate in a poorly designed program is throwing good money after bad, masking rather than fixing problems while the cost to taxpayers climbs into the stratosphere. We won’t be able to get to a real solution until we acknowledge that Obamacare is too rigidly structured and regulated to offer products people actually want, and needs to be reformed or replaced with genuine, functioning markets that give us a much wider variety of plans with different benefit packages, provider networks, and payment structures. Before that can happen, Obamacare supporters need to be held accountable for the law’s manifest failures – not permitted to paper them over with billions more of our tax dollars. Phil Kerpen is head of American Commitment and a leading free-market policy analyst and advocate in Washington. Kerpen was the principal policy and legislative strategist at Americans for Prosperity for over five years. He previously worked at the Free Enterprise Fund, the Club for Growth, and the Cato Institute. Kerpen is also a nationally syndicated columnist, chairman of the Internet Freedom Coalition, and author of the 2011 book "Democracy Denied."
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 26.
#2. To: Justified (#0)
The better answer: SINCE the private sector cannot do it, nationalize it and have single payer. That's where we will go. Clinton has always supported that, and Trump thinks it was a good idea in Canada. I expect that Trump will push for deregulation, which could help some, but which won't really address it. My view: there is no reason for, and no room for, any middleman insurance company profit in health care. Insurance companies provide nothing of value. They simply impose a premium on the cost of health care. The answer is single payer health insurance, without profit, paid for out of taxes. This takes the burden off of employers completely. Health insurance should not be tied to a job. It's a fundamental human need, and should be part of the tableau of basic rights, like Social Security and universal public education.
I can't says that federal government has done anything better than what the market could do. In fact federal government cost much more and gives much less and demands complete control with just a few corrupt people putting crazy demands on the system. Single payer is crazy and the only option is to let the people decide what they want for the price they want it for. To spend more on healthcare than your house payment with no end in sight is crazy. Single payer will demand everyone pay for abortions, transgender mutilations, fertilization gay couples, HIV for gay men, illegal alien coverage with out paying and who knows what else. Market always beats government. Somewhere in time we deemed government and especially central government was for the people when it has shown its not and never has been. Thats why the founding fathers wanted most the power to be in the state where you could easily meet with the government official and they would have to listen to them.
The "market" without Social Security and Medicare means life expenctancies that are ten years lower than they are. That's the price of the free market in eldercare and financial support for the elderly. We as a people have decided that it is better for the government redistribute some of the wealth of the nation into providing health care and income support for old people, because we don't like what the market produces. As sovereign people, we have the right and power to do it, and we have, and we believe that we were right. You are part of the minority who disagrees. Your side lost this argument in the 1930s and the 1960s, and is losing it on health care in the 2010s. It's a free country and you are free to grouse about it until the cows come home. But the rest of us will continue to move along with the settled answers that the majority thinks is best, which is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, universal public education and, in time, universal health insurance paid for by taxes. In an imperfect world where the market does not work well enough to address such things, people form governments and vest government with the power to override private interest and find broader national solutions, using the sovereign power to tax to collect the resources necessary to pay for what is needed. The conservative argument is that the government cannot do any of this well, that the market does it better. If the market did it adequately, we wouldn't have the political pressure for a government solution, and your side would have won the argument. You lost because in real life the market doesn't do a good job at addressing infrastructural issues where there is no profit in what must be done.
It might actually go up because its cheaper to live and you will not have to work as hard as you once did. SS and Medicare is not needed but have been part of society for so long that it would be near impossible to get rid of. We as a people have decided that it is better for the government redistribute some of the wealth of the nation into providing health care and income support for old people, because we don't like what the market produces. Thats how it always starts out. Its the demoncrap way the progressive way. "I really meant to do good but how was I suppose too know it would ruin the world"? Its happens so often that its a shame. If the leaders would be held responsible for their actions then I might budge but since their every actions causes more harm than good in the name of "I meant well" government should always be kept to the minimal as possible as to do the least amount of harm possible. Once government enacts a program you have a better chance of converting a Moslem to Christianity broadcasted on world TV and have them still live in the same neighborhood. In an imperfect world where the market does not work well enough to address such things, people form governments and vest government with the power to override private interest and find broader national solutions, using the sovereign power to tax to collect the resources necessary to pay for what is needed. If you can not trust the people what makes you think you can trust the government run by people?! In simple terms corrupt people will elect corrupt people to government and government will be corrupt. Nothing the government has ever claimed has ever panned out but we still are paying for it and our children are paying for it and someday our children's children will pay the heaviest price because you are jealous that some people make to much. I believe that is a sin is it not? Look life is not fair deal with it. Janitors and hamburger flippers do not deserve to make as much tradesman who do not deserve to make as much as doctors and business owners. People at the low end of pay deserve that low pay because they refuse to sacrifice to get the educations necessary to earn the pay they want. Every time govenrment steps into the market to make it more fair it only screws the middle class because no matter what you do the rich will always be rich. The rich will payoff the the corrupt government leaders to give them loopholes. Even Warren Buffett mocked the system and knows it when he claimed that his secretary pays more in income tax then he does. Never forget government and taxation is a restriction on society and can never bring up a group without bringing down another. You may want to do God's work but end up doing the devils bid!
Life is not fair. Life is difficult. We HAVE dealt with it, with Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Unemployment Insurance. And our world is immeasurably better because we have these things. That's why the general public will not ever let Republican ideologues strip these things away. In fact, we are going to double down and cover everybody with health insurance, and move towards government funding of college education, since college is now as necessary as high school. This is the great divide between Republicans and everybody else. It's why you guys are the 30% minority, and why you have to rely on the Democrats screwing up spectacularly in order to get power. Because the people, writ large, never vote FOR you and your economics. We rejected those long ago and are never going back.
Actually the world is much worse off. Before you were responsible for your actions. Nowadays we just blame others for our own actions. Its always someone else fault I did not save for real needs but hey I have a new 60"TV, couch set that holds 10 people and a brand new vehicle. The selfish generations. That's why the general public will not ever let Republican ideologues strip these things away. Thats why my countries is bankrupt. How much longer will the other countries keep selling their goods for iou's? In fact, we are going to double down and cover everybody with health insurance, and move towards government funding of college education, since college is now as necessary as high school. Why not fund everything? Gas, power, water, sewer, food, clothing, vehicles, insurance[why have insurance when everything is free!], housing, entertainment, vacations, healthcare, dental care, mental care and whatever else you can think of? Hey we can let the rich pay for it! Right? Before govenrment got involved all this above was cheap and affordable. Now no one can afford a damn thing. Government has to print money and borrow money just too pay for the give a ways. No you can not get rid of military and pay for jack shit because then you will lose more high paying jobs which means less money coming into the government through taxes. Let me put it to you this way. Your utopian desires does not and can not work ever. Someone has to pay the bills and when you piss them all off they will stop working and then you have no one paying the bills! Communism doesn't which has been proven over and over again. Look at Cuba or Venezuela. Just pure shitholes where government rules by killing people who dare point out the truth! To get want you want someone has to be the slave and someone gets to be the master.
You have it exactly backwards. It works in every major developed country in the world. The countries that do not have social security and health care systems and universal education are the shitholes.
You have it exactly backwards. It works in every major developed country in the world. The countries that do not have social security and health care systems and universal education are the shitholes. Most of those developed countries that are so "progressive" are in Western Europe, are they not? The same basket case groups of countries that have given the world Nazism, Fascism, and Communism? The same countries that have spent squat on their own defense post WW II - instead relying on Uncle Sucker to take care of that for them? And currently the same group of countries (Germany, Sweden, France and others) that are currently being overrun by Muslims? Yeah - let's model ourselves after those.
Well, there's Canada and the United States, various well-to-do islands in the Caribbean, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Argentina, Uruguay, Costa Rica also have m Latin America mostly has universal public education and Social Security. Mexico and almost all of Latin America (except for the very poorest of nations) has Social Security. In fact, every single country in the Americas has Social Security, and every country in the Americas except for Bermuda (really rich, no poverty) and Haiti - the poorest country of all - has public health assistance. So no, Social Security and health coverage, at least of the poor, is not something restricted to Europe. The whole free world has it. The places that don't have it are Africa and much of Asia - the saddest, poorest places in the world with the lowest life expectancies. You hate an IDEA - the IDEA of partial redistribution of wealth to ensure that everybody has at least a basic minimum of support and medicine. Your opposition is not based on actual economic performance: truth is, all of the highest performing economies in the world, and all of the places that have high longevity, have some form of Social Security and public health and education. And the places that do not have these things all have much lower standards of living, much shorter lives and high illiteracy rate. The modern social welfare state has been adopted in most of the world, and is the REASON that most of the world no longer dwells in abject poverty. In America, the few countries that don't have reasonable social welfare are also the ones in turmoil and the worst poverty - not coincidentally. The LACK of the basics means that people revolt. Want civil peace? Then you need social welfare. You'll never accept the facts. Republicans never do. It's why you lose. Even if the Democrat is execrable, like Hillary Clinton, people STILL face the choice of voting for an execrable human being, even a criminal, versus voting for boneheads who want to destroy the social welfare state. They grimace and vote to retain what all sensible people know we have to maintain. And the Republicans dwindle in number with each election, and rage from the fever swamps. Social Welfare works. The problem in Venezuela and similar places, and the United States for that matter, is the desire to give EXCESSIVE benefits to the politically favored. You Republicans have no sense of proportion. The need to house, feed, educate and ensure medical care for everybody doesn't mean that everybody needs to live in a mansion, drive a Mercedes, eat caviar, drink champagne and get a boob job at government expense. The alternative to insane profligacy is not penury, it's moderation. Sensible people understand the need for moderate, broad, universal social welfare programs, paid for by taxes. And they know full well that it's no Utopia. America, Finland, France, Japan, Mexico and Argentina are not Utopias by any means. But they're a damn sight better than Haiti, the Kongo, sub-Saharan Africa, and all of the backwards and hungry parts of Asia. Zero is not the alternative to "too much", but that's what you suggest we should have: zero. Republican beliefs on Social Security and other social protections are very Hindu (the poor deserve what they get) and not very Christian.
#27. To: Vicomte13 (#26)
(Edited)
First off, I'm not a republican. And just as an aside, you never answered my question from upthread: I'll rephrase it here: 1. In the "single payer" nirvana you envision, who employs the health care workers? Related question - who pays for their years of training and education? 2. How does one "attract" the best and the brightest to these fields - especially when all they can expect to be paid is government wages? Now to return to our regularly scheduled program. I'll repeat - I am not a republican. Since I don't care if republicans "win" or "lose" it's not a case of me winning or losing. Given our current financial trajectory however and statists like the current Ds and Rs (and you, apparently) in charge, the country will be the loser. People will vote for Hil-liar-y Xlinton for a couple of reasons: One, she's a D - and for about 40 percent of voters that is enough. Thanks to the teachers' unions (who have taken over your "vaunted" public education system), people have been indoctrinated (not educated) for the last half century or so. No one is educated in classical liberal arts - things like history. Certainly not US history. And people ignorant of US history are PERFECT Xlinton voters. I also am curious as to why you wish to categorize those of us who simply wish for gov't to pay for benefits it decides to provide (vs. drowning us in red-ink) as "boneheads". Perhaps I missed exactly which republicans were "raging" from the swamps. Would it be Mitch the turtle McConnell - who just gave Obama and the democrats everything they wanted. Likewise Paul Ryan, and before him John "weepy" Boehner? The only vile comments ever directed out of the mouths of these hacks were toward members of their own party - not Obama. Who get's to define moderation? A politician looking for votes? (You've already convinced me the Constitution is old, outdated, and a relic. Which means we're a nation of men, not laws.) So once again - who gets to decide modeeration? Wake me up when one of the statist politicians you love so much has the guts to come up with a way to address the deficit and actually pay for the programs you propose. Till then, it's just mindless jabber and more of the same "kick the can down the road" crap we've heard from the ruling party.
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#7. To: Vicomte13 (#2)
#9. To: Justified (#7)
Market always beats government.
#10. To: Vicomte13 (#9)
The "market" without Social Security and Medicare means life expenctancies that are ten years lower than they are.
#13. To: Justified (#10)
Look life is not fair deal with it.
#17. To: Vicomte13 (#13)
Life is not fair. Life is difficult. We HAVE dealt with it, with Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Unemployment Insurance. And our world is immeasurably better because we have these things.
#19. To: Justified (#17)
Your utopian desires does not and can not work ever.
#21. To: Vicomte13 (#19)
(Edited)
Your utopian desires does not and can not work ever.
#26. To: Rufus T Firefly (#21)
Most of those developed countries that are so "progressive" are in Western Europe, are they not?
Replies to Comment # 26. You'll never accept the facts. Republicans never do. It's why you lose.
Even if the Democrat is execrable, like Hillary Clinton, people STILL face the choice of voting for an execrable human being, even a criminal, versus voting for boneheads who want to destroy the social welfare state.
They grimace and vote to retain what all sensible people know we have to maintain. And the Republicans dwindle in number with each election, and rage from the fever swamps.
Social Welfare works.
The problem in Venezuela and similar places, and the United States for that matter, is the desire to give EXCESSIVE benefits to the politically favored.
Since you mentioned Venezuela . . . 
You Republicans have no sense of proportion.
{sigh} You know, if republicans didn't exist, statists would have to invent them. Strawman much? The need to house, feed, educate and ensure medical care for everybody doesn't mean that everybody needs to live in a mansion, drive a Mercedes, eat caviar, drink champagne and get a boob job at government expense.
Who decides? Once we go down the "it's not fair that somebody has more than me" route, the sky's the limit. The alternative to insane profligacy is not penury, it's moderation.
Sensible people understand the need for moderate, broad, universal social welfare programs, paid for by taxes. And they know full well that it's no Utopia. America, Finland, France, Japan, Mexico and Argentina are not Utopias by any means. But they're a damn sight better than Haiti, the Kongo, sub-Saharan Africa, and all of the backwards and hungry parts of Asia.
Zero is not the alternative to "too much", but that's what you suggest we should have: zero.
Uh-huh. Nice try, but "nyet." Never suggested there be zero - just that when benefits are doled out we should't be doing it with debt financed by the likes of China. Republican beliefs on Social Security and other social protections are very Hindu (the poor deserve what they get) and not very Christian.
First I was mis-labeled a republican - now I'm a Hindu. Wait til the tell the people at my traditional protestant church.
End Trace Mode for Comment # 26.
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