Aetna signficantly reducing Obamacare participation

[spacejamz]

Anyone find it interesting that Aetna was trying to merge with another company and once the fed blocked their merger they come out saying they are dropping from the ACA?

http://www.vox.com/2016/8/17/12515502/aetna-obamacare-merger

I mentioned that in the OP....but it still doesn't change the fact they lost $430 milliion as they under estimated how much in services were going to be paid out in addition to the fact that enough young healthy people were enrolling...

 

[poofyhairguy]

they under estimated how much in services were going to be paid out in addition to the fact that enough young healthy people were enrolling...

Everyone underestimated it. Hell Obamacare was sold on the premise of "we will trick the young people into buying insurance that most of them don't need to subsidize the old sick people." And then everyone was surprised when the young people didn't fall for the trick!

People will always do what it is their self interest. Young people who don't need health care avoid it. Insurance companies who want profits will avoid pools with a lot of sick people. Doctors will avoid payers that don't compensate them as well. The entire system is based on denying basic economic realities and then we get pissed at people for acting in their own self interest. The best system would be one that pushes people into optimal solutions via economics instead of the other way around.

 

[theeedude]

This is why we need to break up these big insurance companies instead of allowing them to merge. They have too much power, to the point where they are now brazen enough to threaten the US government directly.

 

[Bart*Simpson]

It has, we (the US) have the most inefficient and expensive healthcare systems in the world...by far.
The two Canadians I worked with both agreed anything beyond a general check up they'd head home to Canada to have done.
So yes from a consumers perspective that had both options available to them Canada won both times.

Meanwhile, (in the part of Canada that exists in reality) the Premier (Governor) of Newfoundland went to the US for heart surgery because the surgery he needed isn't even available in his province.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news...my-choice-danny-williams-says/article4311853/

The other issue that is of dire impact in Canada is their trauma care is lagging far behind US trauma care.

You can start reading on this issue here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26756769

And here:
https://www.facs.org/quality programs/trauma/ntdb

Canada invests far less money into ambulances, air ambulances, paramedics, and mobile emergency surgical equipment. The State of Alaska has more air ambulances than does the whole of Canada. So does Hawaii.

All of Canada has fewer PICU beds and hospitals than does Los Angeles County.

Canada has 15 hospitals with PICU resources and a total of 85 PICU beds serving a population of ~36 million as of this year (which is an improvement from 2010).

Los Angeles County alone has over 1,000 PICU beds spread over more than 20 hospitals serving a population of ~ten million.

There's a hug disparity in access to MRI and CT scan resources and while I hope things have gotten better it wasn't so many years ago that there were more such machines in California's Sacramento County than there were in the entirety of Canada.

Canadian health care costs less because they simply don't provide costly services in Canada. Even to their political leaders.

In terms of health care outcome data there's a disparity between the US and several other countries that does not take into account the fact that the US takes in far more immigrants than any other country in the world. Most of those immigrants arrive in the US with untreated, chronic conditions and they get added to our heathcare outcome data even if they never pursue treatment in the US.

Illegal immigrants typically don't seek out care because they're afraid of being deported. Note that while the popular focus is on the illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central America there's an approximately equal number of illegal immigrants in the US from Eastern Europe and Asia. Including these people with legal immigrants and we're close to 15% of our current population immigrated into the US in the past ten years.

We do not sort native born people from foreign born people for the purposes of statistical analysis so the impression one can get from out healthcare outcomes is that we're doing really poorly. The fact is that we're not.

The US treats people for certain diseases (such as HIV-AIDS) with a far higher success rate than any other country in the world. Of the people who seek PICU care we have the lowest mortality rate in the world for PICU cases. We simply need to get more people to seek out this care and the other care options that were accessible to them under the laws that preceded Obamacare.

I can go on all day and if you want to read reams and reams of healthcare data I can aim you at it because I work at a state agency where one of our main tasks is to create heathcare analysis for the State of California.

On a personal level my HMO (Kaiser) replaced my knee for me when the VA wanted to amputate my leg above the knee. I'm walking around on two legs because of private health care and if left to the government I'd be waiting for a prosthetic to show up maybe someday.

No thank you.

 

[dmcowen674]

Anyone that believes they have lost money I have a bridge for sale for you.

 

[sportage]

We all knew Obamacare was just a stepping stone.
Democrats knew it, republicans knew it, and Bernie Sanders KNEW IT
And now, on to phase duo i.e. HILLARY-CARE.
Because everyone knows it takes a woman to get things done... the right way

 

[poofyhairguy]

Anyone that believes they have lost money I have a bridge for sale for you.

Its a pretty obvious tit-for-tat

http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/AetnaDOJletter.pdf

 

[hal2kilo]

Here I'll throw you a bone to sort of back up what you are saying.

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/17/aetn...ear-but-will-exit-obamacare-market-there.html

But, here I am posting in a mcowen thread.

Edit: Now I also understand why my post aren't always showing up. Press the f'n button down there.

 

[Orignal Earl]

Because it worked so well in Canada and the UK, right? Oh, wait...

http://civitasreview.com/healthcare/father-of-canadian-health-care-admits-its-a-failure/

"Back in the 1960s, (Claude) Castonguay chaired a Canadian government committee studying health reform and recommended that his home province of Quebec — then the largest and most affluent in the country — adopt government-administered health care, covering all citizens through tax levies.

The government followed his advice, leading to his modern-day moniker: "the father of Quebec medicare." Even this title seems modest; Castonguay's work triggered a domino effect across the country, until eventually his ideas were implemented from coast to coast."

Four decades later, as the chairman of a government committee reviewing Quebec health care this year, Castonguay concluded that the system is in "crisis."

"We thought we could resolve the system's problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it," says Castonguay. But now he prescribes a radical overhaul: "We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice."

Never heard of the guy
Everyone knows Tommy Douglas is the father of Medicare in Canada
Never trust Frenchies, every other word is a lie

 

[Atreus21]

When brute force don't work, you ain't using enough.

 

[openwheel]

Single Payer like the rest of the modern World.

Our current health care system has been a complete joke. Obamacare is a step in the right direction (Republican vision I might add) but not a complete overhaul that it needed.

 

[openwheel]

Why do you think that the people who advocate for single payer actually care about any of that? They want it because they know the middle wage earners (under $100K) will bear most of the burden of paying for the previously uninsured. And that if they decide to 'live their dream' to drop out of the workforce to backpack through Europe or whatever they'll have the knowlege that other, more responsible people will pay for their healthcare needs.

You are in complete denial. By removing employer's burden of health care, there is huge headroom for higher wages. This means higher tax revenues (now we can actually cut taxes), higher GDP....etc healthier economy overall.

Private contractors for federal government are getting extra 35% for fringe benefits, another 15% for overhead, another 15 for G&A, then add whatever fee and profit. Talk about a waste of tax payer money. I swear the right wing nut jobs need better education and stop dragging this country down. In case you don't understand, this means for every $1.78 we pay that person, that person is only getting less than $1.00 before taxes.

 

[openwheel]

This is why we need to break up these big insurance companies instead of allowing them to merge. They have too much power, to the point where they are now brazen enough to threaten the US government directly.

The insurance companies absolutely need to go.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Talk about a waste of tax payer money.

It is only a "waste" if you think that the federal government could do a better and more efficient job of administration. I for one doubt it after spending time in the industry trying to collect reimbursements from Medicare.

Remember how everyone melted down about Sarah Palin's "death panels" (known as the Independent Payment Advisory Board IRL)? Well thanks to that freak out we now know that a political entity (which nowadays means any part of the federal government) can never be the "bad guy." So we pay the insurance companies to be the bad guy, so they tell grandma Joe she can't have another hip and I hope she enjoys hospice.

Without the middle man suddenly what health care is paid-for becomes a political football (much like abortion pills today), and politicians pandering for votes will be sure to continue of tradition of selling the county's future down the river to get those votes. When we have a single payer system paying out $6 trillion a year because every grandma gets every hip replacement and every drug addict gets 5 star resort therapy then suddenly the bad guy middle man won't seem like such a waste.

 

[ivwshane]

The biggest issue with single payer from a public policy standpoint is that it requires price controls on everything in order for it to work. That's something that's easily dismissed by the right as hurting businesses profit. I thought the ACA did a decent job with it is price controls on insurance companies (the 80% rule) but it's not the insurance companies that are the issue, it's drug pricing, hospital charges, doctor fees, etc.

The only way we get change is if moderate Republicans start pushing single payer, leaving only the extreme right of the party to be the opposition. We know that won't happen though.

 

[1prophet]

Let me pose this question....again.

When/if single payer health care comes into being in the U.S., what happens to all the money being spent by employers on employees' health ins.? It's seen as a benefit, if not part of your wages, so are the employers going to start giving the money directly to the employees?

I'd think that would go far to taking care of increased taxes to pay for the single payer ins.

If it is negotiated as part of your compensation package more than likely, otherwise good luck, trickle down doesn't work, I can see employees having their insurance payment that is deducted from their paycheck substituted by a single payer tax and the company keep their share unless the government makes them pay part of single payer tax like they have to do with social security.

 

[Ns1]

Meanwhile, (in the part of Canada that exists in reality) the Premier (Governor) of Newfoundland went to the US for heart surgery because the surgery he needed isn't even available in his province.

Meanwhile, an epi-pen is $600/2 in US and $200/2 in Canada.

 

[dank69]

Only if you agree to price and wage controls on your industry first. Once we chop your salary down to a more reasonable level then we'll talk about price controls on medicines.

What do you know about his industry and how do you know it isn't already at reasonable levels?

 

[abj13]

The other issue that is of dire impact in Canada is their trauma care is lagging far behind US trauma care.

You can start reading on this issue here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26756769

I'm not going to waste my time digging through your parade of false statements. We'll start with this one.

1) Did you read the paper you cited?
2) Why are you posting that paper?

Googling up papers and not understanding the author's data/conclusions shows how little you actually understand the issues at hand

The US treats people for certain diseases (such as HIV-AIDS) with a far higher success rate than any other country in the world.

Completely false. Some of the best estimates of the global death can be found here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4202387/figure/F10/

Or if you want raw data:
HIV deaths in the US for 2013: 2.2 per 100,000
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/aids-hiv.htm
HIV related deaths in Canada in 2013: 0.86 per 100,000
http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/aids-sid.../dec/assets/pdf/hiv-aids-surveillence-eng.pdf
(take the number of deaths 303 divided by the total population of 35,160,000, multiply by 100,000

And that's just a simple analysis. When you look at other European countries, the US isn't great at managing HIV.

Blatantly false statements like that make it not worth my time to call out the rest of your bullcrap.

 

[openwheel]

It is only a "waste" if you think that the federal government could do a better and more efficient job of administration. I for one doubt it after spending time in the industry trying to collect reimbursements from Medicare.

Remember how everyone melted down about Sarah Palin's "death panels" (known as the Independent Payment Advisory Board IRL)? Well thanks to that freak out we now know that a political entity (which nowadays means any part of the federal government) can never be the "bad guy." So we pay the insurance companies to be the bad guy, so they tell grandma Joe she can't have another hip and I hope she enjoys hospice.

Without the middle man suddenly what health care is paid-for becomes a political football (much like abortion pills today), and politicians pandering for votes will be sure to continue of tradition of selling the county's future down the river to get those votes. When we have a single payer system paying out $6 trillion a year because every grandma gets every hip replacement and every drug addict gets 5 star resort therapy then suddenly the bad guy middle man won't seem like such a waste.

1. You are assuming your government can't handle it. Fair statement, BUT, you already have government employees sitting around with nothing to do but you want to pay even more to private contractors. Again, waste of tax payer money. Don't provide alcohol to someone with alcohol problems. please. How ironic is it that the right wing can't understand this cycle.
2. You are assuming every grandma gets multiple hip replacements. Show me proof that is the case in Canada, France, Taiwan, or any other modern democracy. Actually, show me proof that healthcare is "more expensive" per capita than the US of A.

 

[Fenixgoon]

Because it worked so well in Canada and the UK, right? Oh, wait...

http://civitasreview.com/healthcare/father-of-canadian-health-care-admits-its-a-failure/

"Back in the 1960s, (Claude) Castonguay chaired a Canadian government committee studying health reform and recommended that his home province of Quebec — then the largest and most affluent in the country — adopt government-administered health care, covering all citizens through tax levies.

The government followed his advice, leading to his modern-day moniker: "the father of Quebec medicare." Even this title seems modest; Castonguay's work triggered a domino effect across the country, until eventually his ideas were implemented from coast to coast."

Four decades later, as the chairman of a government committee reviewing Quebec health care this year, Castonguay concluded that the system is in "crisis."

"We thought we could resolve the system's problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it," says Castonguay. But now he prescribes a radical overhaul: "We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice."

except here in the US, we don't have freedom of choice. we have the choice given to us by employers, usually. unlike say, car insurance, where i can purchase from damn near whomever i want as an individual, my insurance is by-and-large limited to those providers offered through my employer. i think i had 3 options for health insurance this year, all through United one way or another.

 

[Bart*Simpson]

More good news on Obongocare:

http://blogs.wsj.com/cfo/2016/08/16/fed-survey-obamacare-causing-companies-to-cut-jobs/

(Federal Reserve) Survey: Obamacare Causing Companies to Cut Jobs


You must have forgotten that this isn't Stormfront. The use of the pejorative "obongo" as a racist term for Obama is not allowed here. I searched, urban dictionary lists it as racist. Well thought out arguments indicate it's racist:
"In British English, Bongo Bongo Land (or Bongo-bongo Land) is a derogatory reference to Third World countries, particularly in Africa, or to a fictional such country."
"The 1947 song Civilization by Bob Hilliard and Carl Sigman, recorded by various artists, contained the line "Bongo, Bongo, Bongo, I Don't Want to Leave the Congo"".
"The Babongo, or Bongo, are an agricultural people of Gabon in equatorial Africa who are known as "forest people" due to their recent foraging economy."
And the only people who have used this term for Obama on these forums each has multiple infractions for racism. -Admin DrPizza

 

[openwheel]

More good news on Obongocare:

http://blogs.wsj.com/cfo/2016/08/16/fed-survey-obamacare-causing-companies-to-cut-jobs/

(Federal Reserve) Survey: Obamacare Causing Companies to Cut Jobs

Jobs that Republicans are complaining about? So Republicans must be happy with Obamacare now right?

 

[Bart*Simpson]

When you look at other European countries, the US isn't great at managing HIV.

The USA stopped barring immigrants to the USA who have HIV/AIDS a long time ago and as a consequence we have a lot of immigrants who show up here with unmanaged infections. These people get counted in our statistics for healthcare outcomes even though our healthcare has nothing at all to do with their condition when they arrive in the USA.

 

[abj13]

The USA stopped barring immigrants to the USA who have HIV/AIDS a long time ago and as a consequence we have a lot of immigrants who show up here with unmanaged infections. These people get counted in our statistics for healthcare outcomes even though our healthcare has nothing at all to do with their condition when they arrive in the USA.

Post 1: The US is the best of the best in HIV care
Post 2: Well, the US care of HIV patients isn't that great because of immigrants

Nice flip-flop John Kerry.

Explain this to me then.
You think its immigrants that are causing poor outcomes. What is the HIV rate of all these immigrants?
Better yet, explain a surrogate value. If almost a majority of immigrants (illegal or legal) immigrants are from Mexico and Latin America, why is the HIV mortality rate the following?

Mortality rate due to HIV
Hispanic race: 2.1 per 100,000
Non-hispanic race: 2.1 per 100,000
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr64/nvsr64_02.pdf


And why did you post that study from earlier? I'm still waiting on that one.