When Co-Op Health Insurers close, what happens to customers’ all ready paid in deductibles?
The new insurer will not credit the already paid deductibles in 2016. Consumers will have to start all over again with new deductibles. This is despite President Obama’s implied promise that consumers will get credit for the deductibles paid.
President Obama’s goal was to make Obamacare as complicated as possible so no one could understand it.
I believe neither he nor his administration understand all the interwoven parts and the unintended consequences.
Obamacare was built to fail.
Obamacare was built so that whatever part of the component policy failed, that policy would ultimately default to a single party payer system. The original goal was to have complete government control of the healthcare system.
The federal government would control choice and restrict access to medical care.
Americans’ free choice would be disappear.
Obamacare’s healthcare exchanges have only been attractive to people who could not obtain healthcare insurance because they had pre-existing illnesses.
That was a good thing. However, premiums were too high for the healthy uninsured.
The healthy uninsured would pay for the consumers with preexisting illnesses and spread the risk. The thought was that it would lower the cost of insurance.
The Obama administration lent $2.5 billion dollars to only 22 states that opted to set up Co-Ops to compete with the healthcare care insurance companies offering insurance through the health insurance exchange in those states.
These Co-Ops were destined to fail. The Obama administration’s plan was to low ball the insurance premiums and force the healthcare insurance companies to compete and lower their premiums.
President Obama’s reinsurance program to subsidize and protect insurers from loss fell apart because of budget restraints that he signed into law.
High-risk people with pre-existing illnesses flocked to sign up for the Co-Op’s healthcare insurance. The Co-Op insurance plans were poorly advertised and constructed. Few healthy people bought the plans.
We are constantly told how many people lost their insurance and their deductible.
In reality the Co-Ops was the “public option” without the approval of congress.
So far, seventeen of the twenty-two have declared bankruptcy so far. The remaining five Co-Ops are on the way. The federal government will never get paid back for the $2.5 billion dollars in loans.
Illinois’ Co-Op “ Land of Lincoln” declared bankruptcy and closed out over 49,000 patrons. The have to get new insurance to cover them for October, November and December.
“A large insurer (Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois) on the Illinois’ Obamacare exchange has decided not to credit former Land of Lincoln members for money they’ve already paid toward their deductibles despite a request from the state to consider doing so.”
“They will likely have to start from zero again on their deductibles and out-of-pocket max payments — in some cases costing them thousands of additional dollars.”
The other large insurers have not commented yet. President Obama has not come through with his promise to cover these deductibles.
President Obama and his press secretary deny Obamacare is in trouble. The casual observer who reads are Paul Krugman’s articles in the New York Times and believes he personally has adequate healthcare insurance would also believe the lie.
Paul Krugman is President Obama and Hillary Clinton’s hatchet man. When something goes wrong in any area of the economy Mr. Krugman blames it on the Republicans without evidence or data.
The New York Times and his readers believe him without critically evaluating his statements.
Paul Krugman: “Most of the news about health reform has been good, defying the dire predictions of right-wing doomsayers.”
This is lie. He has no positive evidence for this statement except that Obamacare has added 10 million people to the Medicaid program.
This could have been accomplished without Obamacare by simply raising the definition of poverty from its obsolete 1955 level.
Paul Krugman :“But this week has brought some genuine bad news: The giant insurer Aetna announced that it would be pulling out of many of the “exchanges,” the special insurance markets the law established.”
Others have pulled out in addition to Aetna.
UnitedHealth, Cigna, Blue Cross and Blue Shield and other smaller insurance companies such as Baylor/ Scott and White have pulled out because they have lost huge amounts of money. Their losses are unsustainable for their business.
Seventeen of the 22 federally funded Co-Ops have gone bankrupt and closed down. They were supposed to create competition like the public option to keep premium prices and deductibles down.
Paul Krugman says: “This doesn’t mean that the reform is about to collapse.”
What does it mean? He does not say.
Then he goes on to attack the Republican Party and Donald Trump.
“They’re problems that would be relatively easy to fix in a normal political system, one in which parties can compromise to make government work. “
Maybe the Republicans cannot compromise because Obamacare was so poorly conceived and constructed.
Obamacare has been a waste of government money and taxpayers’ money. It is destroying the delivery of medical care. I would call this a failure.
Maybe the Republicans are correct in opposing a law that is increasing the federal deficit while claiming is that it is budget neutral.
It is unbelievable that Hillary Clinton wants to expand Obamacare. Isn’t it because Obamacare is failing and unsustainable?
Then Mr. Krugman goes on to take an inappropriate swing at Donald Trump.
“But they (the problems) won’t get resolved if we elect a clueless president (although he’d turn to terrific people, the best people, for advice, believe me. Not.).”
Paul Krugman then goes on to tell lie after lie about the success of Obamacare and how unfairly Republicans view Obamacare.
“Paul Krugman says:” The economy of race prevents Medicare and Obamacare expansion.”
“White voters “don’t like the idea of helping neighbors who don’t look like them”
“New York Times columnist Paul Krugman argued Monday that the opposition of red states like Texas to accepting federal money to fund Medicaid expansion isn’t based, as claimed, on a commitment to smaller government and the superiority of the free market so much as it is the politics of race, and who would receive those funds.
Medicaid expansion, Krugman noted, disproportionately benefits nonwhite Americas, and voters in red states — particular the white ones — “don’t like the idea of helping neighbors who don’t look like them.”
Paul Krugman is an economics professor. Can’t he figure out that the system has failed economically? American needs a better system with responsible consumers driving the system.
Who is stimulating race wars without facts or evidence?
Paul Krugman is stimulating race wars with unfounded statement like this in order to defend Obamacare and President Obama’s legislation. Legislation that has failed.
“Nearly a third of the nation’s counties look likely to have just a single insurer offering health plans on the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges next year, according to a new analysis, an industry pullback that adds to the challenges facing the law.”
Higher than expected costs have led UnitedHealth, Aetna, Humana and many smaller companies such as Baylor/Scott and White to pull out of Obamacare’s federal health insurance plan.
With the demise of the state Co-Ops the competition is even slimmer.
Forty percent of 10 million people is 4 million people who are going to be affected by a decrease in competition. The total enrollment in Obamacare has been stagnant the last 3 years.”
We must repeal this debacle called Obamacare and start a new system that could work. A consumer driven healthcare system for all as described in my article “My Ideal Medical Saving Account is Democratic.”
It includes everyone. It provides financial incentives to everyone to be responsible for their own health and healthcare dollars.
“What do we have to lose?”
The opinions expressed in the blog “Repairing The Healthcare System” are, mine and mine alone.
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