[MD]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won ... th-spiral/

"The more the premiums increase, the fewer healthy people want to sign up for care. They opt to pay the penalty instead of buying insurance with a massive deductible. That causes the balance of sick and healthy people buying insurance to worsen, prompting more rate increases and causing people — and insurers — to drop out.

He said that Aetna's heaviest utilizers of health care — the top 1 percent to 5 percent — are driving half of the costs in the exchanges."

A-yup. I'm healthy and left three years ago. Voted with my feet. Turns out I'm not alone.

What? You mean I might get sick? A-yup. Could be. Then they have to sign me up or maybe I just die.

[Plantagenet]

Aetna isn't the only one taking down the ACA. Humana just announced they will no longer offer healthcare through the ACA starting in 2018 (next year). Humana had already withdrawn from most states for the 2017 year----by 2018 they will be totally out of it.

From the link above:

"Humana announced that it would pull out of all of its remaining ACA exchanges for 2018, arguing that the risk pool was unbalanced because not enough healthy people were signing up for insurance compared with the number of sick people.

“That logic shows just how much the risk pool is deteriorating in the ACA and how poorly structured the funding mechanism and premium model is,” Bertolini said. “I think you will see a lot more withdrawals this year of plans [by insurance companies].”


The ACA was already in a death spiral----and the insurance companies and Trump and the Rs are all gonna help it spiral down even more.

[MD]

It's such a twisted and illogical world we live in now. So many mutually exclusive cries for a utopian society.

"Kill the unborn... save the sick at all costs."

"Stop using fossil fuels... bring all the refugees here!"

"Halt phosphate mining! ... organic gardening will save the day!"

"Save the rivers! ... save the People!"

ffs... what happened to critical thinking skills?

Oh I know... "Facebook said it! It must be true@!@!@"

I know I know. I truly have become my tag :"Cynical Old Bastard."

[Outcast_Searcher]

It's such a twisted and illogical world we live in now. So many mutually exclusive cries for a utopian society.

"Kill the unborn... save the sick at all costs."

"Stop using fossil fuels... bring all the refugees here!"

"Halt phosphate mining! ... organic gardening will save the day!"

"Save the rivers! ... save the People!"

ffs... what happened to critical thinking skills?

Oh I know... "Facebook said it! It must be true@!@!@"

I know I know. I truly have become my tag :"Cynical Old Bastard."

Kudos for a really excellent post. Disclosure: from another cynical old bastard.

[Plantagenet]

The ACA Individual Mandate is no longer being enforced.

irs-blow-to-obamacare-individual-mandate

Trump signed an executive order during his first few days in office ordering the IRS and HHS to not allow the ACA to financially hurt anyone. The IRS is interpreting this to mean that you no longer have to check the box indicating whether or not you have health insurance when you submit your taxes.

In the past if you indicated you didn't have health insurance you had to pay a tax penalty----or at least that is wha the ACA says.

Now there are no more tax penalties. People are free to sign up for Obamacare if they want (assuming they can find an insurance company in their offering a plan at a reasonable cost) or they can sign up for private insurance they want outside the exchanges or they can go uninsured if they choose.


No Obamacare? Don't worry---the tax penalty isn't being enforced anymore!

[Tanada]

Today the retread of the ACA with the RINO fingerprints all over it was rejected by Congress and hastily withdrawn by Speaker Ryan before the vote could be taken. That means the ACA remains on its steep downward trajectory instead of getting a cash infusion accompanied by cosmetic improvements at best.

IMO we are fortunate that enough voters pressured Congress to kill this retread bill, all it would have done is to kick the can down the road a couple years without any actual improvements to the disaster in the making that is the ACA.