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At least six swing states face double digit premium hikes
Posted: Aug 17, 2016
Double-digit Obamacare premium hikes projected in 2017 may bode in Donald Trump’s favor, as several swing states are being impacted by double-digit increases under the law and consumers are expected to see the hikes around Nov. 1 — one week before heading to the polls. Trump has promised to repeal and replace Obamacare, but Hillary Clinton has vowed to make the Obamacare exchanges work. Some say the way she would do that is through raising taxes. “Any reports of premium increases will immediately become talking points on the campaign trail,” stated Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation. “We’re in an election where the very future of the law will be debated.” The Heritage Foundation found dramatic increases on premiums in Wisconsin and Florida as well as Michigan, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina under the law in comparison to before Obamacare went into effect. Currently, insurers in the Obamacare marketplace in North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Illinois are wanting double-digit hikes on premiums. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina is reportedly requesting to increase rates by more than 18 percent, while in Ohio, the average requested hike is around 10 percent. In Pennsylvania, companies want hikes averaging 23.6 percent, according to the Pennsylvania Insurance Department. The next president may face the meltdown of Obamacare, as Aetna announced on Tuesday that it’s pulling back coverage in 15 states and will only remain in four states due to a $200 million dollar loss. ;
As planned, bankrupting insurance companies. - I'm still waiting on my $2500
[ In Reply To ..]annual savings.
Centralization and consolidation of just about anything does not - work. It never has and never will.
[ In Reply To ..]Leaving decisions up to individuals will always yield better results, more innovation, and higher quality.
the socialist government model does not work for anyone except those in charge.
The doctors and their cronies in the Obama administration (and some insurance companies) enjoy great healthcare and all the benefits of wealth and privilege. The vast majority of Americans do not and will not see any improvements from the ACA, in time they will see continued degradation in the quality and affordability of healthcare and choice.
Too many management personnel ruin big hospitals and healthcare - organizations. Most of these
[ In Reply To ..]people with their Internet masters degrees sit around and go to meetings all day long and do nothing but talk about compliance with the federal regulation de jour. They pull down salaries bigger than our best nurses and try to minimize what little influence physicians still have over your health care. Young physicians burdened by huge educational debt are forced to work for these groups because of the immediate income available. The government tilts the table against the independent physician by giving the large organization 150% of the reimbursement for a physician's service that an independent physician gets. Once all the independents are driven out of a community, just watch the prices go up.
Healthcare consolidation limits freedom and independence. - The govt drive to consolidate
[ In Reply To ..]doctors and hospitals – and thereby more easily exert control -- began with Medicare and continues under Obamacare. Here’s how:
First health insurers are consolidating. Medicare unconstitutionally prohibits private purchase of health insurance after age 65. Obamacare prohibits purchase of catastrophic insurance after age 29. This prohibition enabled the Obamacare scam, which gave us all expensive high-deductible plans. Even worse, hospitals and physicians are merging into Obamacare’s Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), hospitals and clinics that together act as “insurers,” bear the financial risk of treatment and create conflicts of interest with patients.
Second, rural hospitals are closing. Due to declining payments under Obamacare, 48 rural hospitals have closed since 2010 and another 283 are in trouble, reports The Washington Post. This means fewer hospitals at a greater distance from patients. Obamacare cuts to Medicare and to uncompensated care are much to blame.
The cost of Obama’s federal electronic health record (EHR) mandate has also been difficult. Smaller hospitals have merged with larger hospitals because they couldn’t bear the cost.
Furthermore, all hospitals nationwide are under their second major “price control” assault. In 1983, Medicare instituted the prospective payment system, which created fixed reimbursements for care rather than payments based on hospital costs. This closed 440 small hospitals. To stop the exodus, Congress created a “critical-access hospital” designation in 1997, exempting smaller hospitals from Medicare’s “fixed payment” system. But fixed payments are back today in Obamacare’s bundled, lump-sum, and “episode of care” payments.
Third, Medicare payment reforms will destroy the private practice of medicine. As just one example, the $300 million in penalties for 87% of solo practices under the new Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) are expected to cause retirements, consolidation and more employed doctors.
But physicians can break free. Physicians should stop participating in Medicare and Medicaid -- it’s time to leave bureaucratic paperwork and >132,000 pages of federal regulations behind -- but be willingly to see these patients for an affordable cash-based price. Physicians should refuse to sign health plan contracts and open their doors to all patients. This will lower prices, bust up the care-restricting managed care networks and eliminate corporate control of medical decisions.
Insured patients should encourage their doctors to deal directly with them – and be ready to pay their non-major medical bills in cash, check or charge. Unless patients and doctors make a break for freedom together, the government’s drive to total control will put health freedom on auto-destruct.
CCHF
What does this mean - anonie
[ In Reply To ..]Medicare unconstitutionally prohibits private purchase of health insurance after age 65.
I had to buy supplemental insurance so this is a really confusing statement.
Dr. Barbara Bellar sums up Obamacare in one long - sentence. "We are going to be gifted
[ In Reply To ..]with a healthcare plan that we are forced to purchase, and fined if we don't, which reportedly covers ten million more people without adding a single new doctor, but provides for sixteen thousand new IRS agents, written by a committee whose chairman doesn't understand it, passed by congress, that didn't read it, but exempted themselves from it, and signed by a president who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief, who didn't pay his taxes, for which we will be taxed for four years before any benefits take effect, by a government which has bankrupted Social Security and Medicare, all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese and financed by a country that is broke.
So what the blank could possibly go wrong?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue6xzPAyJxY
O'care was never about health. It's about taking over - 1/6 of the economy. It was NEVER
[ In Reply To ..]about anything else.
Do you remember Fitzgerald's book The Great Gatsby? - At one time Jay Gatsby who
[ In Reply To ..]lived in a mansion on a hilltop offered free roofing to everyone around him — as long as he could put on thatched roofs, like you would find on a serf’s hut.
Government controlled health is the same thing.
Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that - requires every citizen to prove
[ In Reply To ..]they are insured, but not everyone must prove they are a citizen.
And now, any of those who refuse or are unable to prove they are citizens will receive free insurance paid for by those who are forced to buy insurance because they are citizens.
Ben Stein
Remember when Obama used his pen and phone to - circumvent Congress and impose
[ In Reply To ..]his will on America?
I do too. Vote Trump!
Obamacare causing companies to cut jobs. - Many companies are cutting jobs in
[ In Reply To ..]response to rising health care costs spurred by the Affordable Care Act, according to a new survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Roughly one-fifth of service sector and manufacturing company executives said they are reducing the number of workers in response to provisions in the healthcare law...
The New York fed surveyed about 100 executives in the manufacturing sector and roughly 150 executives in the services sector located in New York State, Northern New Jersey and Fairfield County, Connecticut...
The results add to a bevy of bad news related to the Obama Administration’s signature health care law. Health insurers are requesting average premium increases of 24% this year, according to an independent analysis, while Aetna said it would withdraw from 11 of the 15 states where it offers plans through the Affordable Care Act exchanges...
Companies nationwide cite rising healthcare costs as one reason for increasing labor pressures on margins. Omaha, Neb.-based communications company West, for example, sold several call-center businesses last year, partly because of wage and health cost increases, said chief executive officer Tom Barker, in an August earnings call with analysts.
Charlotte, N.C.-based fast food chain Bojangles, cited increasing healthcare costs as a weight on first-quarter revenues. Meanwhile, Broomfield, Colo. restaurant chain Noodles & Co. also cited increased labor costs, partly due to rising healthcare, as one reason margins declined in its fiscal second-quarter. The companies didn’t respond to requests for comment.
According to the New York Fed’s survey, executives said they expected healthcare costs to rise a median 8.5% this year, and another 10% next year, according to the survey. They cited higher insurance premiums, higher prescription drug costs, and the ACA as factors...
WSJ
Obamacare was always intended to be phased - into nationalized healthcare.
[ In Reply To ..]It's more than a little ironic that the healthcare insurance companies colluded in their own demise by backing this scheme. They were lured by the prospect that the Obama Limited would deliver millions more insured. They lined up at the station to welcome them with their shiny new government vouchers.
While they were pushing and shoving, competing to sign up the new arrivals, not one of them saw the second train coming down the track.
If it's true that speed kills, greed surely kills quicker and deader.
And that's why AARP kept pushing it. - NM
[ In Reply To ..]xx
I think gradually allowing people to buy into....sm - oldtimer
[ In Reply To ..]Medicare early would be the best option. Private insurance would still exist, but only for voluntary supplemental plans. I love my totally unrestricted Medicare!
Aetna decision exposes weakness in Obama's healthcare - law. Insurance giant Aetna's
[ In Reply To ..]decision to stop offering much of its individual coverage through the Affordable Care Act is exposing a problem in President Obama’s signature health-care law that could lead to another fraught political battle in Congress.
Aetna’s announcement Monday night was the latest sign that large insurers are losing money in the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces, heightening concerns about the long-term stability of a key part of Obama’s domestic policy legacy. But addressing this issue could open the door to a nasty political fight, given that some Republicans have vowed to repeal the law outright.
If insurers continue to lose money, more are likely to withdraw from the marketplaces, a move that would reduce choices for consumers and could contribute to higher premiums. In one county, Aetna’s exit in 2017 could leave no insurers offering policies through its marketplace.
Aetna said it will exit 11 of the 15 states where it offers coverage through the Affordable Care Act, widely known as Obamacare. That affects about 80 percent of its customers covered through insurance marketplaces.
The marketplaces, known as insurance exchanges, were created to provide coverage for Americans who cannot get affordable health benefits through a job. A key aspect of the health-care law, the marketplaces allow people to purchase insurance online with subsidies based on their income.
Earlier this month, Humana said it will cut back its participation on the exchanges from 15 states to 11. On an earnings call in July, UnitedHealth Group chief executive Stephen Hemsley announced that his company plans to remain on “three or fewer exchange markets.”
In a reversal of expectations, Anthem said it is projecting mid-single-digit losses on the individual plans it sells on the exchanges for 2016. And Cigna has said that it is losing money on the exchanges, although the insurer is planning to expand its marketplace presence to three new states in 2017.
The health-care law is likely to prompt another heated political battle, regardless of which party wins the White House and control of Congress in November.
GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has suggested that he would seek to scrap it altogether. Quoting a news story by Reuters on Tuesday, he tweeted: “Another health insurer is pulling back due to ‘persistent financial losses on #Obamacare plans.’ Only the beginning!”
Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has pledged to modify the law to expand coverage and wants to add a public insurance option.
Both candidates’ proposals would face stiff political headwinds, but several health-care experts said lawmakers could still pursue more modest changes to make the program work better.
“The idea of somehow repealing it is far-fetched,” said Joseph Antos, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “But changing it is not far-fetched.”
There are many possible policy remedies, but the main issues have to do with the risk pool — the balance between healthy people and sick people with higher health-care expenses. Many insurers have noted that people who have signed up for health insurance on the marketplaces are sicker, putting greater demands on the system.
“You have here a situation which all of us who care about the exchanges have to worry about,” said Zeke Emanuel, who served as a top White House health policy adviser during Obama’s first term and is now vice provost for global initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania. “There is a problem with the risk pool. There is a problem with the numbers of people signing up.”
One solution would be to entice more people — particularly healthy ones — to sign up for insurance, whether through a more robust public outreach campaign or by warning them about escalating financial penalties for not having coverage. Another would be to find new and better ways to give insurers that cover the sickest people greater financial relief.
"One solution...warning people about escalating financial - penalties for not having coverage."
[ In Reply To ..]Wow, people already pay a fine (it's really a tax) for not having insurance, so they're going to raise the fine!!!
So much for freedom of choice.
What has happened to America?
This country is not about the individual anymore, it's - about the collective, or so
[ In Reply To ..]they want you to think. It's really about control.
The fine for not having health insurance goes up every year. - sm
[ In Reply To ..]Either you pay now for health insurance or pay later via a penalty or bankruptcy due to a catastrophic illness. It is the American way. Medicare for all would be so much better!
Hillary will blame the insurance companies, excoriate - the medical profession and
[ In Reply To ..]demand that the healthcare system be ‘NATIONALIZED’ in order to "save it."
The doctors will love it. They will get a fixed salary of around $250K/year and will be limited to seeing 5-7 patients a day.
If you need to see the doctor...tough, you are on the waiting list, no matter the medical problem.
But the rich and DC elite will get all the medical care they need.
Aetna wanted to merge with Humana to offset some of their - losses to stay in business,
[ In Reply To ..]but the DOJ blocked it.
The Aetna/Humana merger might have helped pare the losses mounting up from an imbalance in the risk pool. It sounds like Econ-1 to me.
Yet Aetna saw a sharp increase in profits...sm - VTMT
[ In Reply To ..]in the final quarter of 2015, 38%. Back in April they said they were "encouraged by growth so far in 2016".
There are no loses! This is retaliation pure and simple. - nm
[ In Reply To ..].
They made a deal with the devil. I would have happened - anyway, they lost $200 million in the exchanges
[ In Reply To ..]IN THE 2ND QUARTER ALONE.
I’ve seen annual losses in excess of a billion for a single provider. They made a deal with the devil.
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