Trumpcare Flopped

[vorlon13]

How is the 'pubs plan different from the no plan I'm looking at ?

[Minimalist]

They're happy about it.

[Autumnlicious]

And bad news for me in the Omaha World Herald yesterday:

Iowa Blue Cross and Blue Shield affiliate Wellmark Inc. will not offer individual health insurance next year, either on the Affordable Care Act’s exchange or off, the Iowa Insurance Commissioner Doug Ommen said Monday.

The 21,400 people with individual Wellmark plans will receive notices and must switch to other insurers for 2018, he said.

“We are very concerned about this development, but Iowa is not alone as ACA markets around the country are being left with few to no options available to consumer.” 


Yeah, I'm affected. Most of those left slowly twisting in the wind are self employed farmers like me.

They're not offering individual plans at all. They've had that card to play before Obamacare appeared. That's the perils of the "free market" offering health care - when it's not yielding enough profit, don't offer it.

A public institution is obliged to provide services, even if it is unprofitable. Private industry has no such requirements. With the instability of Trump in regards to healthcare, Wall Street has little reason to have a rosy outlook for heathcare corporations and that will directly impact their bottom line.

[Minimalist]

I'm sure you'll be sympathetic, V when you learn that the poor CEO of Wellmark, Inc. had to suffer a 9% pay cut in 2015.

https://aishealth.com/archive/nblu1016-01

Wellmark, Inc.

John D. Forsyth
$702,500        Salary
$2,474,098     Bonus
$72,028          Other
$3,248,626      Total Compentsation
-9.4%             Change from 2014

Poor Mr. Forsyth can't survive hits like that now, can he?  Why, he might have to sell his second yacht...which in fucking Iowa seems like a good idea anyway.
What is your health compared to his standing among the other criminal executives of Wellmark?  Just listen to the WLB.  He'll tell you it is your duty to sacrifice for the comfort of the upper 1%!

[vorlon13]

In the last few months I've had 2 cancer scares and a blood sugar concern. Nothing the 'pubs have passed is affecting me yet, all my difficulties are with the 'Affordable' Care Act. I've had to change my physician, and this years premium is ~$13,000. The dems have earned via diligence and perfidy some stink eye from your vorlon.

I also note Wellmark lost nearly $100,000,000 last year.

[Pat Mustard]

I also note Wellmark lost nearly $100,000,000 last year.

That's probably from paying something like $2,000,000,000 in "copyright" and "trademark" fees to their Bahamian subsidiary which mar a dhea owns the rights to the company names and logos. Said Bahamain subsidiary will consist solely of a brass plaque.

This scam is pretty much ubiquitous amongst financial services companies worldwide.

[Minimalist]

No, actually it lost about 90 million on the specific function over the least 3 years - that being the individual insurance market in Iowa.  Wellmark itself had revenues of nearly 3 billion and paid nearly $23,000,000 in federal income tax which is a significant increase from 2015.  That is not a sign of a corporation losing money.

http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/.../170409973

Wellmark's ACA exit shows why insurers need to know health law's future

For months, insurers have threatened to quit offering marketplace plans if they don't get the regulatory details they need to design and price their insurance plans.

Wellmark is a latecomer to the health insurance exchanges. It began offering marketplace coverage in Iowa this year. Before that, it sold individual insurance plans outside of the ACA marketplace. In a statement, Wellmark said it lost about $90 million from ACA-compliant health plans sold in Iowa over the past three years.

That's not a small sum, and insurers aren't in the business of withstanding losses to prop up a struggling market, said Craig Garthwaite, a health economist at Northwestern University. It's critical that the insurers are able to at least break even on the marketplaces, he said.

Still, the loss is a drop in a bucket relative to the $2.7 billion in revenue Wellmark recorded in 2016 alone, financial documents show.

If you click on where it says financial documents and scroll down to page 6 it will show you where the company's 2016 tax records are noted.

This is an industry problem because the republicunts are trying to blow up the ACA and really all they have to do is sit on their asses to attain that.

[Jackalope]

this years premium is ~$13,000.

Before I switched from an employer-sponsored PPO to a high deductible plan, my premiums were that high, pre-ACA, not including my employer's portion (which really wasn't that much).

[Aroura]

In the last few months I've had 2 cancer scares and a blood sugar concern.  Nothing the 'pubs have passed is affecting me yet, all my difficulties are with the 'Affordable' Care Act.  I've had to change my physician, and this years premium is ~$13,000.  The dems have earned via diligence and perfidy some stink eye from your vorlon.

I also note Wellmark lost nearly $100,000,000 last year.

Why don't they fix the ACA, then?  They could, you know. And you are wrong, something the 'pubs passed in 2015 IS affecting you right now. It's why you have (I'm so sorry) lost your healthcare.

The original ACA bill had provisions to make sure insurers were protected from profit loss.

Can you guess who gutted those provisions? (Hint: Not the Dems)

How Marcio Rubio sabotaged the ACA

[Crunchy]

Conservatives truly believe that letting companies compete freely will lead to the best possible system no matter what is being sold. It's this blind faith in the "free market" that is the problem and you can't argue with blind faith. It's like arguing religion with these folks. 

Insurance is not like other products and they seem to dumb to know this. They think selling insurance is like selling potato chips.  

Here are a few differences for any conservative reading this:

• Insurance a product where the seller qualifies the buyer. Show up with $30K in cash and they will sell you that car no questions asked. Show up with $30K and the insurance company may just tell you they won't sell you the product at any cost depending on your history. What happens here to supply and demand?
• Those who most need health insurance will be the first to be excluded from the entire market. Does this sound like any product you can think of? 

None of this is the insurance companies fault! It is a systemic issue that cannot be solved by Free markets. Insurance works quite well to charge appropriate premiums for most property and casualty risks but health care is different. It’s more like flood insurance which is plagued by adverse selection. If you want to build your house in a flood plane, no one can sell you flood insurance. If you don't like that, move to a safer area. However, if you are old or have contracted an illness... you can't move to another body. Adverse selection works to keep sick people from getting health insurance just like it works to keep flood insurance unavailable. It’s a well known and studied type of market failure. The solution to this problem is... Universal health insurance. 


Obama Care has given Americans a taste of a semi rational system and now that they have been given a taste they are more susceptible to understanding the truth about health insurance instead of buying into the conservative lie that the free market will solve all problems.

I think that the Dems should be campaigning heavily in conservative strongholds because many of those people will literally die under an unregulated insurance market and they are finally starting to see that first hand. Remind them of that over and over and over and see if they still want to vote for a Republican faith based economic system when their life is on the line.