Category: Impact

Aetna’s pullback from the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) Insurance Exchanges is another bad omen in a growing list. Throughout the controversial history of Obamacare, Aetna has been a stalwart continuing to voice confidence in the future of the program.

Until we are willing to have a conversation about how to fundamentally change a failing program Obamacare is just going to continue to deteriorate. That won’t happen until supporters end their denial and Republicans admit they can’t turn back history.

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The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has produced massive consolidation among health care providers, largely the result of hospitals merging and large hospital systems taking over private doctor practices. In response and in an apparent attempt to improve their negotiating position with the consolidated providers, four of the five major for-profit health insurance companies have proposed mergers: Aetna with Humana and Cigna with Anthem. The Department of Justice (DOJ) has moved to block the mergers, citing a growing threat to health care market competition.

Before making that decision, the DOJ asked Aetna, and likely the other insurers as well, how DOJ action to challenge the merger would affect the insurer’s decision to participate in the ACA exchanges.

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Democrats claimed for years that ObamaCare is working splendidly, though anybody acquainted with reality could see the entitlement is dysfunctional. Now as the law breaks down in an election year, they’ve decided to blame private insurers for their own failures.

Their target this week is Aetna, which has announced it is withdrawing two-thirds of its ObamaCare coverage, pulling out of 536 of 778 counties where it does business. The third-largest U.S. insurer has lost about $430 million on the exchanges since 2014, and this carnage is typical. More than 40 other companies are also fleeing ObamaCare.

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Could it be that the highly compensated insurance-company actuaries are lousy at math? For months, we’ve been reading stories about how big medical bills incurred by Obamacare enrollees are driving publicly traded insurance companies from the exchanges. Some affiliates of the venerable Blue Cross Blue Shield Association (BCBS), reeling from the costs of paying medical claims for a population that is unhealthier than expected, have joined the stampede to the Obamacare exits, while others seek premium increases of as much as 60 percent or sue the government for corporate handouts to offset their losses.

The apparent desperation of insurance-company CEOs might lead you to believe that Obamacare was failing. Not a chance, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
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There are a lot of people in the U.S. who dream of single-payer health care. And what a dream it is! Government as the only entity paying for care, able to drive down costs while ensuring universal coverage. There are not a lot such dreamers who think that the transition to such a system is imminent here.

Politically, it may be easier to get a single-payer system on the ballot in a blue state than it is to get it onto the floor of the U.S. Congress. But practically, it’s even harder to implement one that doesn’t bankrupt the government and enrage the citizenry. Such an experiment would certainly have effects on health-care policy for the rest of the nation — presumably a swing away from single payer.

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Blue Shield of California is shutting down for the four days after Labor Day to reduce its payroll-related liabilities, citing losses in California’s Covered California Obamacare exchange and other commercial and individual lines of business.

The move will affect most of its 6,000 employees in California, except about 1,000 who work for Care1st, which it acquired last fall for $1.2 billion, and some staffers in customer service and related areas who will remain on the job. The exact number of workers involved hasn’t yet been tabulated, according to the San Francisco-based insurer.

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A new report in Health Affairs has found that the smoking penalties imposed by the Obamacare health plans have not succeeded in getting smokers to quit. Even worse, the penalties have deterred some smokers from obtaining health insurance in the first place.

The health insurance plans offered on the exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) cover smoking cessation treatment with no cost sharing. As a further “nudge” to quit smoking, the insurance plans charge tobacco users up to 50 percent more in premiums than non-users. For purposes of the surcharge, a Department of Health and Human Services regulation defines tobacco use as self-reported consumption of “any tobacco product, including cigarettes, cigars, chewing tobacco, snuff, and pipe tobacco, four or more times a week within the past 6 months.”

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Washington experts have been frequently wrong about the Affordable Care Act.

They projected far more enrollees in ACA exchanges than materialized. They also projected that the individual insurance market would stabilize in 2016 with robust competition. Instead, the country is grappling with enormous premium hikes and fewer choices.

A new government report reveals perhaps the largest mistake yet: Medicaid enrollees who gained coverage through the ACA cost almost 50 percent more, on average, than the government projected just one year ago.

ACA supporters often point to Medicaid expansion as the law’s greatest success since it reduced the overall uninsurance rate. We now know that result comes with a gigantic price tag.

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A government report finds that the cost of expanding Medicaid to millions more low-income people is increasing faster than expected, raising questions about a vital part of President Barack Obama’s health care law.

The law provided for the federal government to pay the entire cost of the Medicaid expansion from 2014 through the end of this year.

Obama has proposed an extra incentive for states that have not yet expanded Medicaid: three years of full federal financing no matter when they start. But the new cost estimates could complicate things.

In a recent report to Congress, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said the cost of expansion was $6,366 per person for 2015, about 49 percent higher than previously estimated.