• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

UnitedHealth warns it may exit Obamacare plans

Page 4 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Let's see... an article basically written by the insurance industry with their evidence being supported by industry shills, and it's all fact? Here's a few things in the article that stand out to me:

- The nation's largest health insurance provider dealt a blow to the Affordable Care Act...
Click to expand...
is followed later by:

- Even though UnitedHealth wasn’t a major player yet on the ACA exchanges...
Click to expand...
So big deal. Then there's this nugget:

- UnitedHealth (UNH) downgraded its earnings forecast, bemoaning low growth projections for Obamacare enrollment and blaming the federal health care law for giving individuals too much flexibility to change plans.
Click to expand...
So consumer choice is killing them? Of course, this statement is from a member of a very well funded health care foundation, which makes it 100% accurate, right? She followed that with:

- “If they can’t make money on the exchanges, it seems it would be hard for anyone,” Hempstead said.
Click to expand...
Really? How bad were their losses?

- The company lowered its full-year 2015 earnings-per-share forecast to $6, down from $6.25 to $6.35, and shares of UnitedHealth stock fell 5.7% to close at $110.63.
Click to expand...
Absolutely devastating losses... not. So they aren't raking in as much profit and are having to pay out more in services, and this is bad for the consumer? No, it's bad because they aren't raking in as much profit. So go ahead, get out there and cheer their saying that Obamacare is a failure because that's exactly what they want you to do. There's nothing better than getting a sucker to do your work for you.

It's something you can laugh about, all the way to the bank.
 
zinfamous said:
Oh, the catch! 😀

(basically--no dem can propose it. no matter what. Details don't matter)
Click to expand...

I ultimately may not agree with his answer. But I really want to know what the phrase means to DSF and others. It seemed to get some agreement in the responses immediately following it.

This thread shows there is still significant dissatisfaction with our healthcare system overall. I think the ACA is better than what was before it based on improved coverage rates among other things. But it certainly has not brought us to health care nirvana (if such a thing is possible).
 
senseamp said:
It may stop or may not. Who knows. Someone else will step in and take the money.
Click to expand...

It appears they are stepping out because it's a losing business model. I doubt they had a board meeting and said "yeah, fuck all that profit we're making from the ACA".

Sounds like the problem is that the healthy people aren't signing up, at least with them, to balance the unhealthy ones. Maybe they just get unlucky and get all of the really expensive people or maybe they are just the first to pull out with more following. It does suck to be first in something as political as this.
 
JSt0rm said:
What about the metric of making money off of death and misery? :colbert:
Click to expand...

Perhaps we shouldn't let anyone make money when people desperately need their service.

My air conditioner broke. It's not fair that some repairman gets to profit from my discomfort.

There's an oil spill. It's not fair that some cleanup company gets to profit from the cleanup effort.

I want coffee. It's not fair that Starbuck's gets to profit from my need for coffee.

Markets exist to fill peoples' needs. To caricature that as simple greed is lazy and unfair.
 
Spungo said:
This whole thing is a complete disaster. We keep trying to shift who pays for medical care, but we're not working on lowering the cost of that care.
Click to expand...

Ding ding ding.

The cost of health insurance is NOT the problem. The cost of healthcare is the problem. The more something cost the more it costs to insure it.
 
DrDoug said:
Let's see... an article basically written by the insurance industry with their evidence being supported by industry shills, and it's all fact? Here's a few things in the article that stand out to me:

is followed later by:

So big deal. Then there's this nugget:

So consumer choice is killing them? Of course, this statement is from a member of a very well funded health care foundation, which makes it 100% accurate, right? She followed that with:

Really? How bad were their losses?

Absolutely devastating losses... not. So they aren't raking in as much profit and are having to pay out more in services, and this is bad for the consumer? No, it's bad because they aren't raking in as much profit. So go ahead, get out there and cheer their saying that Obamacare is a failure because that's exactly what they want you to do. There's nothing better than getting a sucker to do your work for you.

It's something you can laugh about, all the way to the bank.
Click to expand...

Well, yeh, but something doesn't need to be true at all for Righties to believe that it is & to predict Doom on the basis of what they already believe.

They believe the ACA will fail and will clutch desperately at any ray of hope that it might be.

United is a shitty outfit that made money offering shitty & deceptive plans for years. My sister in law worked very briefly in their customer service dept until she figured out that her job was structurally designed to give customers the run around. My former employer had United as one of the choices for a single year at which point the workforce was up in arms because of their bullshit. Had a poll been taken at the time, "Dirty rotten cocksuckers" would have garnered more votes than any other choice. I wasn't fooled by the low price, kept my rock solid Kaiser coverage.

United's problem is that the ACA forces them to offer honest plans, something they've never been good at.
 
senseamp said:
They get a tax break by losing $500M too. Also, countries with single payer systems spend half of what we do for better health.
Click to expand...

Yeah but if you just donate it then you don't have to do all the work and can have your people working on profitable stuff instead.

Also I'm rather curious, what makes you think that simply changing who pays the bill is going to significantly reduce the cost of what your paying for?
 
pcgeek11 said:
Don't you read. There is no money to take.
Click to expand...

I think the reading comprehension problem is yours. When and if no insurors participate in an exchange you'll have a point. United's problem is that they can't compete on a level playing field.
 
Darwin333 said:
Yeah but if you just donate it then you don't have to do all the work and can have your people working on profitable stuff instead.
Click to expand...
It increases long term political risk to their entire business model. Then the profitable stuff could go away too.
Also I'm rather curious, what makes you think that simply changing who pays the bill is going to significantly reduce the cost of what your paying for?
Click to expand...
This assumes you pay for same things. But if your deductible is high, maybe you'll think twice about paying for some of them, or shop around for a better deal.
 
Last edited:
who said it was bad? I just said it was a metric.


Its very American to make money off of death and suffering...

saupload_jq1_thumb1.jpg
 
senseamp said:
It increases long term political risk to their entire business model. Then the profitable stuff could go away too.
Click to expand...

So against everything that the left supposedly stands behind, huge companies should be playing ball in the political field if they want to make money? I'm sorry buy politics should have very little to do with which company makes what kind of profit. I'm all for getting money out of politics but the very idea that you just introduced puts them in bed with the politicians.
This assumes you pay for same things. But if your deductible is high, maybe you'll think twice about paying for some of them, or shop around for a better deal.
Click to expand...

Wait, so single payer comes with a high deductible now? How does that help poor people, you think they can afford a $5K deductible? Not to mention that once the .gov is involved, if you owe them $5K they are going to get it somehow. And while possible it's absurdly difficult for the average joe to shop medical prices. Half the places straight up will not give you a price upfront, which is against the law in every other field but the medical industry is exempt. When was the last time you walked into a doctors office and saw his prices for a simple checkup on the wall? While it's illegal for a place that fixes my car to charge me whatever the hell they want, depending on my ability to pay or payment method, it's perfectly legal when I need to be fixed up at a doctor or a hospital.

I have yet to see a good argument that makes the insurance companies the fault of our high healthcare costs. Insurance companies are in the business of taking money in and paying as little as they have to out. That wouldn't cause healthcare costs to continually rise well above inflation as they have. So the true issue is healthcare costs, not insurance, because insurance costs simply follow the cost of the underlying thing they are covering.

So once again, how does the US going to single payer reduce healthcare costs? Insurance companies, while some do some fucked up stuff, have been a proverbial pinata for people to beat on while keeping them ignorant of the real cause.
 
When the US goes SP, where will doctors flee to for the 'big bucks'? This is a serious question, because this is a problem that plagues small-town canadia (doctors come from, say, South Africa, then take off as soon as they've met the obligation that got them there, usually to the US). If the US goes SP, with the gov basically telling pharma what it will pay, it will be a net benefit to canukistan because the doctors may stay around. In the same way that I think monopoly laws are neat-o, as a super-conservative I have no problem with the gov giving a take-it-or-leave-it offer to the companies that have been raping the poor and elderly on medicine costs since the dawn of time. Drug co.s are like De beers, except we need their products to live instead of landing a gold-digger.
 
Darwin333 said:
So against everything that the left supposedly stands behind, huge companies should be playing ball in the political field if they want to make money? I'm sorry buy politics should have very little to do with which company makes what kind of profit. I'm all for getting money out of politics but the very idea that you just introduced puts them in bed with the politicians.
Click to expand...
You are naive. They have been in bed with politicians for ages. It is in their interest that American people don't decide to change the system away from private insurance to single payer. If they want to make perfect, cherrypicking only healthy and profitable customers, the enemy of their own long term good, that is their business. But Americans are paying twice as much as other countries are paying for health care, and those countries are covering everyone. If private insurance can't deliver at least full coverage, then the American people have a right to use the political system to change the health care system, as citizens in other democracies have done.
Wait, so single payer comes with a high deductible now? How does that help poor people, you think they can afford a $5K deductible? Not to mention that once the .gov is involved, if you owe them $5K they are going to get it somehow. And while possible it's absurdly difficult for the average joe to shop medical prices. Half the places straight up will not give you a price upfront, which is against the law in every other field but the medical industry is exempt. When was the last time you walked into a doctors office and saw his prices for a simple checkup on the wall? While it's illegal for a place that fixes my car to charge me whatever the hell they want, depending on my ability to pay or payment method, it's perfectly legal when I need to be fixed up at a doctor or a hospital.

I have yet to see a good argument that makes the insurance companies the fault of our high healthcare costs. Insurance companies are in the business of taking money in and paying as little as they have to out. That wouldn't cause healthcare costs to continually rise well above inflation as they have. So the true issue is healthcare costs, not insurance, because insurance costs simply follow the cost of the underlying thing they are covering.

So once again, how does the US going to single payer reduce healthcare costs? Insurance companies, while some do some fucked up stuff, have been a proverbial pinata for people to beat on while keeping them ignorant of the real cause.
Click to expand...

Single payer negotiates drug prices directly with its purchasing power. As the only game in town, that's hard to beat. Private insurance does it by forcing the consumer to try to reduce costs, by using a deductible as an incentive. I am sorry you don't understand basics of various health care systems, but your opinion is still valuable.
 
Jhhnn said:
I think the reading comprehension problem is yours. When and if no insurors participate in an exchange you'll have a point. United's problem is that they can't compete on a level playing field.
Click to expand...


If UnitedHealth drops out, consumers would lose one of the lowest-cost plans available in much of the country, and some wonder how smaller insurers could fill the void. .

“If they can’t make money on the exchanges, it seems it would be hard for anyone,” said Katherine Hempstead, who heads the insurance coverage team at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Other health care stocks took a hit, too. Tenet Healthcare (THC) fell 8%, and HCA Holding (HCA) dropped 6.9%. Insurers Aetna (AET) and Anthem (ANTM) fell 6.5% and 6.9%, respectively.
Click to expand...

Yep they are making bank out there...
 
pcgeek11 said:
Yep they are making bank out there...
Click to expand...

they are hurting really bad

http://www.wsj.com/articles/tenet-healthcare-swings-to-profit-1430772743
http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20150428/NEWS/304279979
http://investor.hcahealthcare.com/press-release/hca-reports-second-quarter-2015-results
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/29/us-anthem-results-idUSKCN0Q317920150729

just because your profits aren't increasing at the rate you promised investors doesn't mean you aren't profiting. a company can still profit and lose stock value. such is the hilarious way of the stock market - everything is supposed to go up indefinitely. yeah, because so many things in the universe operate like that....
 
eskimospy said:
It's weird that people say that, because there are lots of cost control mechanisms in it. The IPAB is a great example.

I guess this is probably a function of the huge amount of bad information about the ACA out there.
Click to expand...

Holy fuck you're just horrible at trying to defend things aren'tcha?

What industry do you work in? Please tell us, it's rather comical hearing you talk like you know the ins and outs of our health and insurance industries - As well as our political ones.... Especially knowing how inept you are in regards to general economic policies 😀
 
The problem for health care in America continues to be that medical providers do not have set rates and do not provide estimates for services. Too many people keep expecting capitalism to work in an environment where the consumer is not allowed an informed choice.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top