Tag: Obamacare

Obamacare Collapse: Aetna leaving exchanges in 11 states due to Obamacare

Obamacare collapse
Source: NaturalNews.com
Julie Wilson
August 19, 2016

Healthcare providers are increasingly unable to survive unforeseen costs associated with Obamacare. In June, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas announced its plan to significantly increase health insurance rates, hitting the pocketbooks of some 600,000 residents.

Now, healthcare insurer Aetna has announced that it will completely pull out of the Affordable Care Act individual public exchanges in 11 states, due to millions of dollars in losses. The provider said that it will still offer coverage in Delaware, Iowa, Nebraska and Virginia, but will cease operations in 11 other states beginning next year, as reported by Breitbart.

A statement released by Aetna Chairman and CEO, Mark T. Bertolini, said that the company suffered “a second-quarter pretax loss of $200 million and total pretax losses of more than $430 million since January 2014 in our individual products.”

Aetna reports huge financial losses under Obamacare

Of the 11 million Americans covered under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, 838,000 were Aetna customers, according to data compiled in June. Aetna is the third large insurer to scale back services under Obamacare.

UnitedHealth Group said it will also exit most exchanges next year, after it too suffered huge losses to the tune of $1 billion in 2015 and 2016. And Humana Inc., which covers about 800,000 people, will leave an estimated 1,200 counties in eight states in 2017.

Aetna stated that it will reconsider entering the market in the future, but for now plans to limit its services.

“We will continue to evaluate our participation in individual public exchanges while gaining additional insight from the counties where we will maintain our presence, and may expand our footprint in the future should there be meaningful exchange-related policy improvements,” said Bertolini.

Government: Just raise the premiums and you’ll be fine

The Obama administration says it’s the insurance companies’ own fault for losing money because they set their premiums too low, adding that despite major scale backs from insurers, the system will continue to provide good quality coverage to many.

“Aetna’s decision to alter its Marketplace participation does not change the fundamental fact that the Health Insurance Marketplace will continue to bring quality coverage to millions of Americans next year and every year after that,” said Kevin Counihan, CEO of HealthCare.gov.

Customers who are now forced to obtain insurance or pay a hefty fine that grows more costly over time are being left in a difficult position. Americans are essentially stuck between a rock and hard place, either losing coverage entirely, or having to cough up money for a plan they can’t afford.

“Something has to give,” said Larry Levitt, a healthcare law expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “Either insurers will drop out or insurers will raise premiums.”

Is a healthcare collapse on the horizon?

Others question whether a healthcare collapse may be on the horizon. “While analysts expect the market to stabilize once premiums rise and more young, healthy people sign up, some observers have not ruled out the possibility of a collapse of the market, known in insurance parlance as a ‘death spiral,'” reports The Hill.

A March report published by the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, said that new enrollees under Obamacare experienced 22 percent higher medical costs than people with coverage through their employer. The report drew immense controversy, highlighting the disaster that Obamacare has become.

Last year, a top doctor issued a dire warning about the possibility of a “catastrophic collapse” of the U.S. healthcare system. The former president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons said that the result “will leave Americans clamoring for medical attention, medical supplies and hospital care,” according to WND.

“Catastrophic collapse due to a ‘doctor death spiral’ will occur when we drop below a critical number of practicing physicians,” said Dr. Lee Hieb, a practicing orthopedic surgeon and author of Surviving the Medical Meltdown.

“As our population ages, it requires more physician man-hours of medical care. But as our population ages, so too do our physicians. More than half of the surgeons who cover emergency rooms are over 50.

“And although they are some of the most productive physicians, they are being overloaded and overstressed, and are beginning to burn out. Many are retiring early; others are dramatically reducing their patient loads.

“Recent surveys suggest up to 60 percent of physicians are preparing to do one or the other within two years,” said Hieb.

Read More At: NaturalNews.com

Sources:

Breitbart.com

TheHill.com

NPR.org

AustinSentinel.com

WND.com

Science.NaturalNews.com

Obamacare On “Verge Of Collapse” As Premiums Set To Soar Again In 2017

WHO'S SREWED IF OBAMACARE GETS THE AX?
Source: ZeroHedge.com
August 11, 2016

If Obamacare enrollments continue their current trend and insurers continue to hike premiums at alarming rates then Republicans may not have to worry about “repealing and replacing Obamacare” as it might just work itself out “naturally”.  The 4th open enrollment period for Obamacare begins on November 1, 2016 and industry experts are warning that another year of tepid demand from “young and healthy” Americans could force more insurers out of the exchanges effectively marking the end of Obamacare as we know it.  According to a story published by The Hill, 11 million people bought health insurance through the exchanges for 2016 which was drastically below the Congressional Budget Office’s initial projection of 21 million.

Well we’re shocked!  Turns out that whole “adverse selection bias” was a real thing.  So you’re telling us that young, healthy people don’t want to pay for insurance they know they’ll never use?  We guess America’s youth can actually do basic math, after all.  Apparently they were able to figure out they would rather take the lower tax associated with Obamacare penalties than the larger tax associated with buying a healthcare policy they’ll never use.  We guess Millennials are a little less enthusiastic about embracing socialism when the costs are coming out of their pockets.

With America’s youth continuing to shun health insurance, insurers are all racking up massive losses on the exchanges.  For many insurers the losses will simply result in massive premium hikes but others have decided to withdraw from the exchanges all together.  In fact, UnitedHealthCare recently announced plans to exit most state exchanges by 2017 (see our post entitled “Largest US Health Insurer Exits California, Illinois Obamacare Markets“)  Per The Hill:

In the last month, two major insurers – Aetna and Anthem – both reversed course on their plans to expand in the marketplace. Now, all five of the nation’s largest insurers say they are losing money on the exchanges.

 

“From a policy point of view, we’re basically seeing the exchanges unravel,” said Michael Abrams, a healthcare strategist with Numerof & Associates who consults for insurers including UnitedHealthGroup.

2016 average premiums were up substantially in most states (see map below) and, with no one making money, 2017 seems no better.  According to The Hill:

Already, many insurers this year are proposing substantial rate hikes with the hopes of making up for higher recent medical costs. The average premium increase next year is about 9 percent, according to an analysis of 19 cities by Kaiser Family Foundation. But some hikes are far higher: Blue Cross Blue Shield has proposed increases of 40 percent in Alabama and 60 percent in Texas.

Obamacare Premium Map

For her part, Hillary Clinton has vowed to stick with Obamacare insisting that taxpayers just need to spend more money on advertising to drive higher enrollments:

Clinton has already laid out plans to help boost enrollment by making coverage more affordable for people who are still priced out of ObamaCare.

 

Like Obama, she vowed to invest in advertising and in-person outreach to help more people enroll. Clinton would also increase ObamaCare subsidies so that customers spend no more than 8.5 percent of their income on premiums – down from 9.5 percent under current law.

 

She has also proposed a tax credit of up to $5,000 per family specifically to offset rising out-of-pocket costs – a side effect of cheaper plans offered under ObamaCare.

Right, more advertising should fix it because no one in the country is familiar with Obamacare.  As Obama likes to say when things don’t go as planned, it’s not that Obamacare is bad it’s just that we’ve failed to explain it properly.  No, we think people get it and they just don’t like it.   

We also find it hard to understand how a Clinton administration could make healthcare cheaper than “free?”  Perhaps we should start paying people to take taxpayer subsidized healthcare?  If at first you don’t succeed, throw more taxpayer money at it…

Annual Healthcare Spending Rises To $10,000 Per Person – $3.3 Trillion Dollars A Year

[Editor’s Note]

Don’t forget, that PREVENTABLE MEDICAL ERRORS are the THIRD LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH in the United States.  And those are conservative numbers, for starters.  Secondly, not all deaths via medical mistakes get reported because the data collection method is flawed.  That also doesn’t count the millions injured yearly.  The for-health for-profit medical system will only change when people take charge of their health.  Handing off personal responsibility of your health to others that care about mostly profits is a sure way to stay sick.  Of course, $3.3 trillion spent on healthcare and notice how there are NO cures.  Not within the conventional medical establishment anyways  Do your research, because your health depends on it.

________________________________________________________________

Source: RT America
July 15, 2016

American’s will spend $3.3 trillion on healthcare spending in 2016 – that’s $10k per person. Healthcare expenditures are growing faster than the national economy. Is this a result of Obamacare? To discuss, former health insurance executive Wendell Potter joins “News with Ed” and says that public healthcare options could help bring costs down.

Why Paying Cash For Hospital Bills Is Five Times Cheaper Than Your Government Mandates Obamacare Insurance

Hospital bills
Source: NaturalNews.com
Jonathan Benson
June 23, 2016

Shellshocked by those astronomical Obamacare premiums? You might want to consider just ditching the failed health insurance “tax” altogether and paying cash for medical services on an as-needed basis because, truth be told, you’ll end up shelling out far less money in the long run.

This was the recent experience of a California woman named Caroline who, after receiving a hefty bill for a few simple blood tests, petitioned the hospital where the blood was drawn for answers. What she came to learn is that there’s essentially two pricing tiers for medical services: the insurance rate and the cash rate.

Accustomed to just having her medical treatments billed to her insurance carrier, Blue Shield of California, Caroline was shocked to learn that the $269.42 she was responsible for paying out of pocket for the five blood tests she received — this out of $408 total, the rest of which was covered by her insurance — was nearly four times higher than the total cost would have been if she had just paid in cash, insurance aside.

So instead of the blood tests costing about $80 each at the insurance rate, they would have cost only about $15 dollars each, or about one-fifth the cost, at the cash rate — a substantial savings.

“I was completely surprised,” she told the Los Angeles Times. “The woman I spoke with in billing said that if I’d paid cash, the prices would have been much lower.”

Cash rate closer to what healthcare would actually cost if insurance didn’t exist

This is especially true for common procedures like blood tests and imaging scans that are now widely available at a variety of medical clinics — everything from large hospitals to local clinics, and in some cases even pharmacies and drop-in “minute” clinics.

You can think of it as the “uninsured” rate, or the amount that such services would actually cost in the real world if we didn’t have complex insurance pools, government-subsidized coverage plans, and other inherently wasteful programs that breed price-gouging.

And Obamacare is only making matters worse by spiking many people’s monthly premiums so dramatically that they’re essentially being forced to seek out the lower cash rate. Some people are even ditching their plans entirely and just paying out of pocket rather than try to reach their ever-escalating deductible thresholds — it’s actually cheaper not to use one’s government-mandated health insurance, in many cases!

“This is one of the dirty little secrets of healthcare,” Gerald Kominski, director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, explained to the Los Angeles Times. “If your insurance has a high deductible, you should always ask for the cash price.”

True free-market healthcare: the answer to outrageous pricing schemes

The rationale seems to be that if an insurance company or the government is footing all or most of the bill anyway, then hospitals can charge whatever it wants for medical services. All of this gets thrown on its head, though, when real-life people are having to cover these costs directly.

“This just shows how screwed up the whole pricing system is,” Glenn Melnick, a health economist at the University of Southern California (USC), added, making the case for a true, free-market healthcare system. “It absolutely makes sense to shop around for healthcare like you shop for everything else.”

In an ideal world, insurance companies would negotiate with hospitals and medical providers to get the best possible rates for policyholders. But so much has changed in recent years, especially with the government getting more involved in controlling the destiny of healthcare, that the gap between what medical services actually cost versus what patients are being asked to pay has only widened.

“Insurers aren’t getting the best prices anymore,” says Melnick. “Hospitals often charge whatever they want and have tremendous power over insurance plans.”

Read More At: NaturalNews.com

Obama Premiums Set To Spike Again In 2017

healthcare cost
Source: NaturalSociety.com
Julie Fidler
June 20, 2016

Obamacare was instituted to make sure that every American had access to healthcare, especially low-income individuals and families. But Obamacare insurance premiums are set to go up yet again. For many, their families will be covered, but it could be a hardship.

In 2017, some of the most popular types of Obamacare health insurance plans want to jack up their prices by 10% or more in 14 major cities, an analysis published Wednesday reveals.

The Kaiser Family Foundation analysis shows there is a wide variation in the proposed prices of lower-cost so-called silver plans. The foundation found that about half of the markets it looked at would see a slight drop in the number of insurers selling plans.

The price hikes ranged from a high of an 18% premium increase proposed for the second-lowest-cost silver plan in Portland, Oregon, to a low of a 13% price cut for the same type of plan in Providence, Rhode Island.

In most of those areas, Kaiser’s report shows double-digit hikes would be common. [1]

Cynthia Cox, lead author of the analysis, said:

“Premiums are going up faster in 2017 than they have in past years.”

The impact on consumers will depend largely on whether they receive government subsidies for their premiums, as well as their own willingness to switch plans to keep increases more manageable.

Among the cities Kaiser looked at, the monthly premium for a 40-year-old nonsmoker in 2017 will range from $192 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to $482 in Burlington, Vermont.

Continue Reading At: NaturalSociety.com

Affordable Care Act Not So Affordable: Texas’ Largest Insurance Provider To Hike Rates 60% In 2017

Health care costs
Source: NaturalNews.com
Daniel Barker
June 14, 2016

Contrary to all the promises, the increasingly exorbitant cost of health insurance under Obamacare is beginning to be revealed as Blue Cross Blue Shield prepares to implement a 60 percent rate hike for individual policies in its Texas market.

The increases will affect more than half a million Texans who are now enrolled in Blue Cross Blue Shield – if approved, the new rates will go into effect in 2017.

From The Dallas Morning News:

“Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas has about 603,000 individual policyholders and, unlike other insurers in the state, offers coverage in every county. In a recent filing with federal regulators, the company said it is seeking increases averaging from 57.3 percent to 59.4 percent across its individual market plans.

“In a statement, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas said its request is based on strong financial principles, science and data. ‘It’s also important to understand the magnitude of the losses … experienced in the individual retail market over the past two years,’ the statement said. The company says it lost $592 million last year and $416 million in 2014.”

Among the worst affected in Texas will be those who live in rural areas where Blue Cross Blue Shield is the only coverage available.

Texas is not alone

Texas, the third-biggest market under the Affordable Care Act after Florida and California, is not the only state that will see significant rate hike increases in 2017, suggesting that the ACA is not so affordable, after all:

“With data available for about half the states, premium increases appear to be sharper, but there are also huge differences between states and among insurers. Health insurance is priced locally.

“A recent analysis of nine states by the consulting firm Avalere Health found that average premium increases for the most popular kind of plan ranged from 5 percent in Washington state to 44 percent in Vermont.”

The rate increases throughout the country are in response to huge financial losses for insurers that have been caused by low enrollment, higher-than-expected cost of medical care for many patients and “problems with the government’s financial backstop for insurance markets.”

Some policyholders are eligible for government subsidies that typically cover more than 70 percent of premiums, but many people are ineligible of such protection, including “small business owners, self-employed people and early retirees.”

For many, dropping coverage will be the only option

There is a real concern that many people will simply be forced to drop their coverage, even at the risk of paying fines.

From TheDailySheeple.com:

“In a country where the cost of living is going up on virtually all fronts but wages and jobs are not increasing, exactly who is going to be able to afford this insane rate hike? And that’s just to pay for the insurance in case you get sick…”

“Affordable health care for all” was a lie – Obamacare has accomplished precisely the opposite and the evidence of this continues to mount as Texas and other states witness skyrocketing premium costs.

Mike Adams, founder/editor of Natural News and author of the new book “Food Forensics” said:

“As this is happening, your employer will either go out of business trying to cover your skyrocketing health care costs, or — more likely — slash your hours to make you a part-time employee with no health insurance coverage. You’ll then need a second job to make up the lost income from the first job, and you still won’t have health coverage because you’re part time at the second job, too. So you’ll need a third job just to raise enough money to pay for a crappy health care plan with a $20,000 deductible. But you don’t have $20,000, so if something serious happens to you, you’re basically bankrupt, jobless and ultimately homeless.”

Thanks, Obama…

Read More At: NaturalNews.com

Watchdog Audit Finds Billions Wasted On Obamacare Fiasco

Total Incompetent Government Let Anyone Sign Up With No Proof Of Anything

FactsTruthLiesSource: NaturalNews.com
Daniel Barker
March 9, 2016

There is now yet another reason to be disgusted by the ongoing fiasco known as Obamacare: A new report from the Government Accountability Office has concluded that the federal government’s failure to properly monitor the eligibility of enrollees may have cost taxpayers billions in fraudulent payments.

The problem stems from the inability of the system used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to verify “inconsistencies” in the data it receives from the three agencies (IRS, DHS and SSA) responsible for determining the eligibility of applicants under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).

From the report:

“GAO found CMS did not have an effective process for resolving inconsistencies for individual applicants for the federal Health Insurance Marketplace (Marketplace). For example, according to GAO analysis of CMS data, about 431,000 applications from the 2014 enrollment period, with about $1.7 billion in associated subsidies for 2014, still had unresolved inconsistencies as of April 2015—several months after close of the coverage year. In addition, CMS did not resolve Social Security number inconsistencies for about 35,000 applications (with about $154 million in associated subsidies) or incarceration inconsistencies for about 22,000 applications (with about $68 million in associated subsidies).”

The report warned that these unresolved inconsistencies leave the CMS vulnerable to making fraudulent subsidy payments to ineligible enrollees.

The GAO went undercover to test the system; it created 12 fictitious phone and online applicants during 2014, 11 of which received payments throughout the year, “even though GAO sent fictitious documents, or no documents, to resolve application inconsistencies.”

These fake enrollees received around $30,000 in advance premium tax credits, as well as “eligibility for lower costs at time of payment.” The GAO noted that although the subsidies were paid to healthcare insurers and not directly to enrollees, “they nevertheless represent a benefit to [fraudulent] consumers and a cost to the government.”

No one minding the store

When the GAO looked at how the CMS monitors fraud, it found that the CMS relies on a document processing contractor to report on instances of possible fraud, while not requiring the contractor to have any viable fraud detection capability.

In other words, this is like hiring a blind policeman to catch speeding vehicles.

Continue Reading at: NaturalNews.com