Time for “Medicare for all”. Let’s see how Aetna likes not having a market at all.
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If memory serves, these are the same insurers – pigs – who before the ACA gave out bonuses to staff who found justification to rescind policies when people started actually using benefits, hearkening way back to childhood and declaring some illness wasn’t reported. Of course they can’t make a profit when they’re required to honor their commitments. There are too many fat-cats feeding at the trough.
“Their problems have been driven by a risk pool that is sicker than expected, which Pearson blamed on low enrollment.”
Now wait just one cotton-pickin’ minute. You mean to tell me that the only customers these pigs have are ACA enrollees?
Hardly. I suspect the vast majority of their “risk pool” are in fact NOT signed up through the ACA, rather, are from employee-sponsored coverage. True, some higher risk customers were added by virtue of elimination of preexisting conditions, but they need to adjust their business model away from taking only profitable customers and actually do what insurance was designed to do: spread that risk among all customers, and when a given customer needs it provide benefits in return, not kick them off the policy.
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Or more accurately, Republicans remain steadfast in their conspiracy to funnel every last penny the middle class has to their insurance industry campaign donators, while Congress enjoys top-quality health coverage, taxpayer-paid.
And Republicans lecture us that the middle class needs to be independent and self-sufficient? For people transitioning between jobs, the marketplace is a godsend. We need it, or we need single-payer.
The old (Republican) system will not work.
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Point Six – The health insurance industry is over consolidated and needs to be broken up. Put a stop to the Aetna-Humana merger on antitrust grounds, along with Cigna-Anthem. Break up UHC. Regulate these industries like utilities.
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Imagine if someone decided to run an insurance company like I understand companies do in Germany that provide their universal coverage. They operate without profit, but their incentive is the better they run the more they can pay their employees. In the US that company’s employees could probably make a great salary and the company would pull in most of the insurance business in the US because all the other companies right now seem to be trying to rape the system.
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These companies are so disgusting in so many ways. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-17/aetna-ceo-s-131-million-parachute-biggest-among-health-targets
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To Aetna’s CEO:
“Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out”.
Just saw a Richard Burr ad this morning claiming how Obama care was threatening Medicare and how Burr was working to protect it. What a bunch of horse shit. Man I hope the Hillary flood drowns his senate career. Hope the next D NC senator(s) either keeps his dick in his pants or probably better yet doesn’t have a dick!
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Absolutely agree this is nothing more than payback for the DOJ opposing their merger.
However, it seems to me that Aetna doesn’t have a winning hand in this. As eggrolian said. Aetna IS going to want, nay need a piece of the health care action in this country. They can’t simply walk away from the ACA completely. What’s their alternative? How do they make up the revenue lost?
We need to keep in mind that Aetna turned a profit in 2014 to the tune of $2B.
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Harken is not in Indiana. It is in Georgia and Illinois. It’s an interesting model too.
United’s Harken Health is very promising, though.
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Yes, but they are functioning as a separately managed entity. It’s not the same folks.
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MMMMmmmm…Maybe a lawsuit followed by a ruling that the Federal Government is required to provide a public option when fewer than two private options are available.
Since the Federal Govt requires that we buy insurance, and NO providers are available, the Federal Govt. must step in to provide the insurance. < /slamsgavel>
Nice start.
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The most important lesson: Big health insurer can blackmail the US government. Seems Mr. Aetna is carrying through on his threat to cripple Obamacare if he didn’t get his merger with Humana cleared. Despicable.
This is why i read TPM, especially the comments… and why I reiterate, we ARE the 4th Estate.
tx for the whole story, srfromgr,
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This I must disagree with – because it’s been proven without a doubt these companies can make a fair profit even when they fully honor their commitments. The key–which they don’t want to do–is to have a bunch of other (usually younger) healthy folks who pay their premiums as well. To do that, the insurance carrier must actually compete – but that would require much lower premiums across the board … something Aetna, UHC and other biggies aren’t willing to do. Yet. They are dinosaurs, they know it, and they know their gravy time is limited. Otherwise, nice post.
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This is just one more sign on the road to that elusive single-payer pavement, which will prove quite ironic for the pain profiteers, that the little lady with the big ideas may actually be President when that single-payer card is finally played once and for all.
Hillary seems destined to gain that distinction as our President she missed as First Lady, .
Altogether fitting and proper.
…some sort of vast female conspiracy?
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is just not enough for them, they want more than what is fair, that is the only real problem in all of this, everything else is patent lies to cover their abject greed.
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I agree. ACA took away the picking and choosing that made insurers rich. They are effectively functionaries now, collecting payments and distributing payouts. There is nothing much in that for them, and they are only an added cost to us. This kind of change for most insurers was inevitable.
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I’m a little surprised to have made it through the comments w/o one mention of the Republican’t governors & legislatures who prevented the expansion of Medicaid in their states–thus denying millions of Americans (including many of the ones most in need) of the intended access to health insurance.
Surely, these political actions reduced the (expected) pool of insureds and had some negative economic (besides the negative health) impacts.
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