9 Insurers Exit Nebraska's Health Insurance Market

I saw a similar doco on the BBC a couple of years ago. I wanted to vomit.

 

It's essentially the same thing as a government option when the government is dictating what must be included in the plans and what can't be included in the plans. The government then takes money from the taxpayers pocket and subsidizes those people it determines shouldn't have to pay as much. It will have essentially the same effect, if not worse. It's just easier for people to understand it that way. While those companies are "private" when they begin making 70, 80, 90% of their income coming from those government plans that are being subsidized by the taxpayer, you can call them private until you turn blue in the face, but they're not.

 

No it's not. Don't be ridiculous.

Before Obamacare, every state set minimum insurance standards for policies sold in their state.

Obamacare merely sets a minimum federal standard.

It really is a minimum standard -- it requires insurers to offer coverage in 10 core coverage areas.
http://obamacarefacts.com/obamacare-health-insurance-rules.php

Frankly, the Obamacare standards look pretty much exactly like what a standard insurance policy would cover. Its purpose is to weed out "fake" policies that provide no real coverage.

This is true. The government, having required everyone to carry insurance, felt it necessary to make sure that everyone could afford to do so. So it subsidizes people with low incomes.

The horror!

Yuh-huh. Sure.

 

I don't believe you, those companies don't have a problem paying for it as long as they can raise premiums to offset the increased of providing the healthcare. There is no "free" here. You make insurance companies pay for pre-existing conditions and the premiums have to go up to cover the cost.

 

You can call it whatever you'd like. That doesn't change the fact that if the government bronze and silver plans account for 80% of the insurers profit... who runs the insurer?

Also, the entire premise is flawed. There's a good reason why you can't charge someone with preexisting conditions the same or comparable to someone without. You MUST raise the rates on those people.

This system must fail. People who don't need the insurance are simply going to opt out of it. We will not have enough people who aren't using the insurance paying for it, to make up for those people who are using it too much and not paying in enough. It's an inherent failure.

We went from a system that worked for 90% of the populous to a system that works for only 10 or 15% of the populous and only short-term until the system fails because it can no longer sustain itself.

 

The government isn't providing these customers to the insurers; it has merely set up an online marketplace to make it easy to shop for policies. Any insurer whose policies meet the standard can sell them in the exchanges. The government isn't controlling anything except the interface.

Do you understand what insurance is? It's a means of spreading risk. Insurers look at the average cost of health care, then sets the average premium a little higher than that. They make a profit, and everyone is protected from catastrophic loss.

That's what "group rates" mean in health insurance: insurers offer the same premium to everyone in the group, even people with expensive illnesses. They don't care if they lose money on any given individual: they're making money overall.

So, contrary to your claim, that's *exactly* how it's supposed to work. Healthy people subsidize the sick. But healthy people benefit, because it means if they *do* get sick or injured, they'll be protected from loss and still be able to buy affordable insurance. Put another way: the reason it's okay for the young and healthy to subsidize the older and sicker is that young, healthy people eventually turn into older, sicker people.

How do you determine whether you "need" health insurance? Can you predict if you are going to get sick, or get hit by a truck? Of course not. Which is why if we make insurance affordable, most people will choose to have it instead of taking the risk of going without. Because it eliminates the risk of financial catastrophe. Polls bear that out: most young people want to have health insurance, even though their the group least likely to need it. Because they recognize life is unpredictable.

Your numbers have been pulled out of your butt. And you're wrong. There was bipartisan agreement before the 2008 election that the health-care system was broken and needed to be fixed.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp0804659

Health-care premiums were rising 8-10% a year; total medical spending was soaring. *That* is/was unsustainable, and everyone recognized it. John McCain had a health-care plan; experts on both sides said something needed to be done. It was a big reason Obama was elected.

It was only once Obama got elected and actually tried to do something about it that the GOP decided the status quo was really okay, because they didn't want to give Obama any legislative wins.

 

You're either being dishonest or you don't know what you're talking about. The exchanges are set up so that the government website can guide you to the plans that are offered to you that qualify by the government standards and more importantly the exchanges exist to provide you information on subsidies that are offered to you. You qualify for a subsidy if you make <46,000 as a single person and $94,000 a year for a family of 4. MOST people that the insurers are going to insure through the exchanges will qualify for some sort of subsidy.

Now i'll ask you again... if the majority of the insurers customers (and thereby their profit) is coming from plans that are subsidized with taxpayer funds... who runs the insurance company? If the government says, you need to include this or you need to exclude that from these plans... the insurers will be obliged to comply because if they do not, the government will simply strip away subsidies to people who partake in their plans.

So again... who runs the insurers in that scenario? You can either answer the question honestly or be dishonest... it's up to you.

You're wrong. The reason it's set up so that pre existing injuries are denied or charged FAR higher than others is so that someone who has a preexisting injury will CONSTANTLY pay into the system even when that injury is not causing them any problems.

I'll ask you the same thing I asked them in the other thread:

Then what stops the customer from saying... it's going to cost me $500 a month to keep insurance on myself, my wife and 3 kids. I make $40,000 a year. I have a bad back that goes out on me. My penalty would be $1390 a year if I choose to go uninsured. If I choose to insure us, it will be $6,000. I'm just going to pay the penalty.

Now... oh crap my back went out. Let's call up Obamacare and get insurance. Go to the doctor the next day... get treatment. As soon as I'm better... drop the insurance. Make it 4 or 5 months. Uh oh, my kid gets meningitis... call up Obamacare... get insurance, take the kid to the doctor. The kid gets better. Drop my insurance. Next year, my other kid gets diagnosed with leukemia. Call up Obamacare... sign up for insurance and pay for 9 months so my kid gets treatment and cancer goes into remission. Drop my insurance. 2 years later the kid has another cancer issue... call up and get my insurance again.

If that happens, the system will collapse. The system only works when people who are NOT USING THE INSURANCE are paying into the system even though they aren't using it.

That's very simple, it's called statistics. Statistically certain groups don't need insurance as much as others. And either way in your system, I don't need to pay for your insurance all the time. I just hop on the insurance rolls when I so choose. Even if I hop on the rolls, get diagnosed with a lifelong problem... stop paying your insurance.. I can just jump back on whenever I need treatment without penalty.

Yeah so let's just increase premiums by double and triple on some people... to hell with 10% increases. Let's increase rates on the vast majority of americans. And the ones who were paying for it WITHOUT stealing from the rest of the taxpaying populace... we're now going to price them out and then give them subsidies out of everybody elses pockets. That's freaking genius.

 

Considering that 90% of people are insured through their employers, insurers are not going to be "dependent" on policies sold through the exchanges.

What stops them is the same thing that stops people eligible for group rates from doing that now: annual enrollment periods.

For instance, if you can get insurance through your employer, and choose not to, you're stuck without insurance until the next enrollment period -- typically January 1 of the following year.

Obamacare adopts the same system: you can only enroll once a year, or if you have a major life change (like job loss, a birth, or divorce).

See above. You misunderstand how the system works.

The vast majority of Americans will see no change or even *lower* rates (or rather, a lower rate of premium increases).

The only people who will see their premiums double or triple are people who were buying worthless insurance in the first place.

Right, because the fact that some people were paying a disproportionate share of their income for health insurance means *everyone* should pay a disproportionate share of their income for health insurance....

That's like saying "Because some people survive plane crashes, everyone should be able to survive plane crashes." You look at the exception and think it's the rule.

Obamacare does two semi-contradictory things: it lowers average premiums (by adding everyone, including the young and healthy, to the insurance pool) while expanding coverage (by providing subsidies so people can afford coverage regardless of income). Overall it is expected to keep down the rate of growth in health-care costs -- which was the thing that everyone agreed was a huge problem back in 2008.

As with any change, there will be winners and losers. But the winners should far outnumber the losers.

 

First of all your point is ridiculous. You're referring to statistics that are only valid in the insurance market that we had BEFORE Obamacare. To assert that insurers will have the same distribution of where they get their policy holders from is patently absurd. There's many reasons for this. The most obvious being that Obamacare is going to run those other plans out of business because they're subsidizing people with taxpayer money. The ONLY way those people will get subsidies is by going through the Obamacare policies... bronze through platinum or whatever retarded system they have.

You're also ignoring the fact that MANY employers are simply going to stop hiring people full-time. It will be more cost-effective to hire them part time and only offer 30 hours per week while paying no insurance. So now that person will need TWO jobs, they won't get insurance from either one and they'll be FORCED to purchase their insurance through Obamacare because they won't be able to afford it without the subsidies because Obamacare has forced an increase in price for those other insurance plans. Explain to me why you would NOT choose to hire part-time? If you own a business, you'd be a grade A retard to hire people full-time unless it was an absolute requirement for the position (of which I can't think of many).

You also ignore the fact that even if employers do choose to hire full-time, it will be FAR cheaper for them to simply opt out and pay the fine than it will be to purchase the insurance for every single full-time employee. This means that most of those employees will be purchasing their own insurance and many of which will get a subsidy (paid for by the rest of us) which they can ONLY receive if they participate in the government insurance.

To assert that they will have 90% of their policy holders insured through their employers with this new system is simply false. Now I'll ask you again, if the insurers are being told what they can and cannot offer because most (or an EXTREMELY significant portion) of their income will be coming from taxpayer subsidized government insurance programs... who is in control of the insurance and healthcare market?

No see, that only partially addresses the issue. The reason that we are able to do that with group insurance rates in the system we have now, is because we did not allow preexisting conditions without placing some pretty hefty increases on the price of the insurance. This works because the increase in rates makes up for the amount of extra money that it's GAURANTEED to cost because of a preexisting injury and it also compensates for the amount of time that the uninsured has not been paying into the system. However, Obamacare says we can't do that anymore. That is going to put a MASSIVE strain on the system.

You asked me if I know how insurance works... I have to question if you do... Because if you did you would recognize that insurance ONLY works when you have a bunch of people who are not using the insurance paying into the system. You can't just have a bunch of sick people on the insurance rolls that need help and few, if any, healthy people who are paying into the system and not taking out. That kind of system will collapse upon itself.