Last Wednesday, UnitedHealthcare Group Incorporated (UNH) announced that it will drop coverage of plans under Obamacare in all but a few states by 2017.
The market signaled a thumb’s up: UNH stock prices shot up over 2 percent.
The company, described in the news, somewhat vaguely, as the country’s largest insurer, is sending us a signal: the Affordable Health Care Act and its “Obamacare”?
Not affordable.
An insurance policy must make sense to both parties, the insured and the insurer. The insured gets peace of mind … and coverage when the rare events insured-for take place. The insurer has written enough insurance contracts out there, prices based on actuarial risk, to allow it to make a profit even with payouts.
The problem with the ACA is that it raised costs (in part by forcing insurers to take on patients with pre-existing conditions) while regulating terms of policies offered … and prices, too.
Plus, face it: the idea that one should insure for regular checkups is just one of the many absurdities built into the system.
It’s just too much meddling to work, in the long run. Bailouts and subsidies of those insurance companies that stick with the plan will then make the program unaffordable … for America’s taxpayers.
Over-regulated and over-subsidized, Obamacare suffers from the preposterous idea that a bird’s eye view of the economy from the politicians’ perch gives enough information to run complex systems servicing millions of people with diverse needs.
Expect more big stories with tags lines ballyhooing a “serious blow to Obamacare.”
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4 replies on “Bailed — Before Bailout”
It is not a serious blow to the ACA, it is a serious blow to the possibility of a free market in health care services. The “reform” will be a rationed, single payer socialized system — which was the goal to begin with.
JFB, fear you are correct.
Paul, your brief outline should be adequate to explain to people such as Trump, Sanders, Hillary and all who glorify Economic Central Planing, why the basic idea is at fault. Even if these schemes(for whatever product or service) hired the most dedicated people they could not make it work.
Someone with a per-existing condition should NOT be excluded from receiving health care. This is what has always jacked me up about the health care insurers. They only want to insure healthy people. And I do believe that health care should be affordable and available. However, the Obamacare, just like the tax code, is mired in pages & pages of inscrutable laws.
I wish I had the answer to the problem but I know that enlarging government & the current crop of Presidential candidates do not have the answers either.
The truth is finally coming out, but no one will care about it because Obama’s term is almost up.
Health care reform would have included giving people prices up front for screenings and other routine procedures.
The prices should be the same for everyone. The idea that the provider can charge different people different prices for the same service smacks of discrimination. We should have been allowed to insure for catastrophic care, not for birth control. The argument for Obamacare was that it would ‘reduce costs’ by encouraging regular checkups and screenings. However the high deductibles and higher premiums mean that essentially we are paying everything out of pocket.