Major health insurance companies – Blue Cross, Aetna, United, Humana – have fled the Obamacare health care exchanges in various states, which are scheduled to start on Oct. 1.
[…]The ACA requires every American to have health insurance, or pay a penalty. Individuals who are not covered by their employer can enroll in the state or federal government-run health care “marketplace,” which will provide subsidies to individuals between 100 and 400 percent of the poverty line.
Aetna, a fortune 100 company with $34.2 billion in revenue, has pulled out of public exchanges in three states, and will not be part of the individual health insurance exchange in its home base, Connecticut.
[…]Aetna will also not participate in California’s exchange, and a spokesperson told CNSNews.com that the company never intended to do so.
“We did not withdraw exchange plans in California, as we never planned participation nor filed [Qualified Health Plans] QHPs to participate in the California exchange,” a spokesperson said.
Anthem Blue Cross has withdrawnfrom its bid to participate in the state’s small business exchange, as well.
United Health Group, the largest health insurer in the United States, has also taken a pass on the Golden State’s individual insurance market under Obamacare.
As a result, roughly 8,000 policyholders will be left searching for new insurance.
[…]Only three companies remain in Connecticut’s “Access Health CT” exchange, following Aetna’s departure.
Similarly, only five plans are participating in the exchange in Georgia, after Aetna and Coventry Health Insurance dropped out last week.
The Savannah Morning News noted that this will “leave residents of some parts of the state with limited choice.”
[…]Two of the three largest health insurers in Wisconsin will also not participate in the state’s online marketplace under Obamacare, it was announced on Wednesday.
But I thought that Obama said that people who liked their current health care plan could keep it?
“No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period,” Obama said on June 15, 2009.
“If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period,” he said. “No one will take it away. No matter what.”
That promise, however, has been revised by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which now says, “you may be able to keep your current doctor” in the health insurance marketplace.
Oh I see, once the election is over, then the truth comes out. But it doesn’t matter, because Obama already won the election on the strength of the lie.
Aetna Inc pulled out of Maryland’s health insurance exchange being created under President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform law after the state pressed it to lower its proposed rates by up to 29 percent.
Under the law, often called Obamacare, each U.S. state will have an online exchange where Americans will be able to buy insurance plans, starting on October 1. The government is counting on about 7 million people to enroll next year for this insurance, many of whom will qualify for subsidies.
The success of the exchanges, as well as the expansion of the government’s Medicaid program for the poor, are key elements in the political battle between Republicans and Democrats. State officials say the price of the new insurance plans will help determine whether enough people sign up.
In an August 1 letter sent to the Maryland Department of Insurance, Aetna said the state’s requirement for rate reductions off its proposed prices would lead it to operate at a loss. The rate reductions include products from Aetna and Coventry Health Care, which it bought this spring.
“Unfortunately, we believe the modifications to the rates filed by Aetna and Coventry would not allow us to collect enough premiums to cover the cost of the plans, including the medical network and service expectations of our customers,” Aetna said in the letter to insurance commissioner Therese Goldsmith.
According to online documents, Aetna had requested an average monthly premium of $394 a month for one of its plans and the agency had approved an average rate of $281 per month.
Aetna Chief Executive Officer Mark Bertolini said earlier this week during a conference call to announce financial results that it was closely looking at its plans for the exchanges since buying Coventry.
Like most other large U.S. insurers, Aetna has taken a cautious approach to the new products which must include a broader set of benefits and be sold to all people regardless of their health.
Doug Ross blogged about the cost of health insurance in Ohio a while back. He linked to this article from Forbes magazine.
Excerpt:
[O]n Thursday, the Ohio Department of Insurance announced that, based on the rates submitted by insurers to date, the average individual-market health insurance premium in 2014 will come in around $420, “representing an increase of 88 percent” relative to 2013…
[…]It’s called “rate shock,” but it’s not shocking to people who understand the economics of health insurance. In August 2011, Milliman, one of the nation’s leading actuarial firms, predicted that Obamacare would increase individual-market premiums in Ohio by 55 to 85 percent. This past March, the Society of Actuaries projected that the law would increase premiums in that market by 81 percent…
[…]What are the drivers of the increase? According to Milliman, the two biggest drivers are (1) risk pool composition changes, such as forcing the young to subsidize the old, and the healthy to subsidize the sick; and (2) Obamacare’s required expansion of insurance benefits, particularly its mandated reductions in deductibles and co-pays…
Doug makes the point that we already knew what happens to the cost of health care when government imposes price controls – we get a shortage of health care, and prices go up. We knew that. Obamacare is nothing but a further intervention into free market to impose more price controls. Guess what? It’s going to do the exact same thing. The only way out of this mess is going to be for government to ration care by reducing the number of doctors and delaying treatment with waiting lists – exactly what happens today in Canada.
During the election campaign, Obama promised everyone that his health care policy would result in lower premiums. What reasons did we have to believe him when he said that? Did he have a record of competence on health care policy, like Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal does? Did he have a career in private sector health care to draw on, like Mark Bertolini does? No. Obama had nothing but talk. And we were too busy watching television to care.
Here’s an article from the UK Daily Mail with some more details about her.
Margaret Thatcher stood almost alone in driving through the tough policies now credited with saving the economy, secret papers reveal.
The Tory Premier had to take on her predecessor Harold Macmillan, Bank of England governor Gordon Richardson and even her own Chancellor Geoffrey Howe to push through the policies which pulled Britain back from the brink of economic chaos.
Documents released by the National Archives under the 30-year rule show the pressure Mrs Thatcher faced from the Establishment behind the scenes – and the extent to which she was isolated.
In 1980, the year after becoming Britain’s first female Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher embarked on a controversial programme to revive the moribund economy through deep public spending cuts and strict control of the money supply, intended to stamp out inflation.
He warned that while her programme of cuts might give a ‘sense of exhilaration’ to her supporters, the country was heading for industrial collapse and ‘dangerous’ levels of unemployment.
Macmillan, then 86, sent the letter following a meeting with the Prime Minister at Chequers in August 1980.
He criticised her for abandoning ‘consensus politics’ to pursue radical reforms and ‘divisive politics’, which he said went against the ‘essence of Tory democracy’.
It was Macmillan who coined the phrase ‘you’ve never had it so good’ in 1957 during the long post-war economic boom.
His brand of consensus politics is now credited with contributing to the economic malaise that brought Britain to its knees in the late 1970s.
Years later, in her memoirs, Mrs Thatcher poured scorn on consensus politics, writing: ‘What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner “I stand for consensus”?.’
[…]In 1981, 365 economists wrote to The Times urging Mrs Thatcher to change course and limit the damage caused by the recession.
But she was unmoved, and her tough stance succeeded in reducing inflation from 27 per cent to four per cent in four years, putting Britain on the road to recovery.
Mrs Thatcher’s economic views were heavily influenced by the right-wing Cabinet minister Sir Keith Joseph, with whom she set up the free market think tank the Centre for Policy Studies in 1974.
Both drew on the work of the influential American economist Milton Friedman whose monetary theories challenged the post-war consensus on economic thinking.
I recommend reading the whole article for some more articles where Lady Thatcher had to stand against everyone and hold onto her convictions in the teeth of the majority.
Here’s an article from Forbes magazine that summarizes her effort to turn Britain around.
Excerpt:
It’s hard to appreciate today how desperate Britain’s condition was before Thatcher took office. Its economy was a laughing stock, the perennial sick man of Europe. Strikes were endemic and union bosses effectively governed the country. Her Conservative Party had long ago made its peace with the welfare state and the ethos of high spending and high taxes. While the previous Tory Prime Minister, Edward Heath, wanted to revive Britain, he hadn’t a clue how to do it. In a make-or-break showdown with the coal miner’s union, Heath called a special election under the banner “Who Governs Britain?” Heath lost and unions’ dominance in Britain seemed secure.
Great leaders have an astute sense of taking advantage of circumstances. Even though Heath had lost two elections, none of the senior party officials would challenge him. At the time, Thatcher was not regarded as one of the party’s major figures. But she was the only Tory who firmly believed in free markets and in Britain’s ability to become again a proud nation based on the principles of liberty. She was a devotee of Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman and of the idea of paring back big government and giving free enterprise room to flourish. Astonishingly she beat Heath in a leadership fight in 1975 and led the Tories to victory in 1979.
Immediately she began slashing income tax rates and reining in galloping spending and fighting inflation. She also exhibited that critical sense of timing. When she took office, she was faced with a potential strike of nurses whose union was demanding huge pay increases. Thatcher compromised in a way that some thought she didn’t have the backbone to turn Britain around. Instead she was exhibiting a great politician’s sense of knowing when to pick a fight. Thatcher eventually pushed through major labor union reforms and made it clear she would not tolerate any union riots or violence. Shortly after Thatcher won reelection, the coal miners union, which had destroyed Heath, decided to take her on. But unlike Heath Thatcher was fully prepared. The big showdown ensued and Thatcher beat the coal miner’s union resoundingly. It never recovered from that defeat.
Thatcher knew the deadweight on the economy of excessive taxation. She cut the top income tax rate from 98% to 40%. She cut the corporate income tax rate from 52% to 35%.
One of Thatcher’s greatest innovations was the systematic selling off of the government’s business assets, dubbed privatization. After World War II Britain nationalized enormous swaths of the economy which actions subsequent Conservative governments left largely untouched. Thatcher sold government companies off and her example has been followed by countless nations around the world.
In the area of privatizations, she did two remarkable things. She sold off much of Britain’s public housing. An enormous number of Britons, far more than in the U.S., lived in these government-owned buildings. Thatcher pushed the sale of these apartments to occupants at low prices and on very advantageous terms. The purpose was to begin to shift the mentality of people and their dependence on government. Her other smart move was in the privatization of government-owned companies: offering a significant number of shares to workers at very low prices. Union leaders hated privatization but their opposition was undermined as their members realized that they could do very well buying cheap shares in these newly-privatized entities. Here again she was changing peoples’ thinking: pro-big government workers now saw themselves as share owners, taking on more of a capitalist mentality.
Before Thatcher, many social observers thought that Britain had an ingrained, unchangeable, anti-commercial culture that would forever stand in the way of the country becoming an economic success. Yet within a decade of her taking office, Britain had the most vibrant, large economy in Europe, one even more dynamic, innovative than that of Germany’s. London became a magnet for entrepreneurs from France, Sweden and elsewhere.
One unchangeable characteristic of a great leader is courage and that means taking career-breaking risks. Thatcher demonstrated her mettle in the Falkland Islands crisis. When the Argentinean military dictatorship seized Britain’s Falkland Islands, most military experts felt the Sceptred Isle simply did not possess the military means to take them back. Defying almost the entire political establishment which was haunted by both Britain’s current weakness and the memory of the Suez Canal debacle in 1956, Thatcher declared that the seizure would not stand and that Britain would go to war to take the Islands back. Thankfully she received critical help from the U.S. thanks to in large part the unrelenting efforts of Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger (who years later became Publisher and Chairman of Forbes). To the surprise of experts, Britain’s military expedition succeeded. The Argentinean military dictatorship fell and democracy was restored in that country. For Britain the Falklands war was a huge boost to a demoralized nation. To the world it meant that once again tyranny would be resisted.
I recommend reading that whole article. It’s hard not to smile at a woman who clearly loved her country and worked to save it from poverty.
Why good men love Maggie
And now I must offend everyone. See, I have a theory about women. I think that women generally tend to be more beholden to the opinions and fashions of the crowd than men are. It’s not absolute, but it’s maybe two-thirds to one-third, in my experience. I think that it is generally hard for them to hold to their convictions in the face of peer pressure. That’s why so few young, unmarried women are conservative after graduating from college. As soon as they reach college, they are swayed towards liberal views by their need to feel good about themselves and their need to be liked by others. Their views at home were not rooted in real knowledge, they were just fitting in with their families and churches and saying whatever words they were expected to say. And then they go off to college and learn other words to say from another community that uses praise and blame to replace their former convictions with new convictions.
But Maggie Thatcher wasn’t like that. And here’s why:
John Ranelagh writes of Margaret Thatcher’s remark at a Conservative Party policy meeting in the late 1970’s, “Another colleague had also prepared a paper arguing that the middle way was the pragmatic path for the Conservative party to take .. Before he had finished speaking to his paper, the new Party Leader [Margaret Thatcher] reached into her briefcase and took out a book. It was Friedrich von Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty. Interrupting [the speaker], she held the book up for all of us to see. ‘This’, she said sternly, ‘is what we believe’, and banged Hayek down on the table.” (John Ranelagh, Thatcher’s People: An Insider’s Account of the Politics, the Power, and the Personalities. London: Harper Collins, 1991.)
Policies like unilateral disarmament, wealth redistribution and redefining marriage sound good to many women – especially in college, and especially when only one side is presented and the other side is demonized. The only way to resist ideas that feel good and ideas that get you peer-approval is to have formed your own views through independent study. Lady Thatcher’s economic policies were formed through a study of real economists like Nobel-prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek and Nobel-prize-winning economist Milton Friedman. The reason why she was able to hold to her principles is because she knew what she was talking about, and her opponents did not. She didn’t care about feeling good. She didn’t care about what other people thought of her. She knew was right, and that was enough to sustain her in trying times. She had the knowledge, and her opponents couldn’t change her core convictions by trying to shame her. It didn’t work.
WINTERY KNIGHT 