Obamacare: Broken Promises and Lies

This article from the typically liberal leaning Time does a good job of dismantling the lies of Obamacare.

One must understand that Obamacare was DESIGNED to fail.  If Obama and the democrats could have made the leap straight to completely government run healthcare, they would have done so.  But they knew better.  First, they had to set the hook and bury it as deeply as possible.  They had to make it so painful to dismantle Obamacare that those who had gotten hooked on it, mostly those who were getting it for “free” or without paying the full freight, would revolt if you took away their “free” stuff, and would demand the government take over the whole system.

We warned you back in 2010 what you would get with Obamacare.  I wish we had been wrong, and America was actually better off and improving.  But sadly, we were right.  Now Obamacare is collapsing around us as even the subsidized insurers can’t make a profit on this abomination.  Obamacare WILL collapse.  It’s only a matter of time.

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Aetna Has Revealed Obamacare’s Many Broken Promises

• Michael F. Cannon@mfcannon

Aug. 25, 2016

Cannon is director of health policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute

The recent exodus of insurers shows we need more reliable affordable care

They’re dropping like flies.The health-insurance giant Aetna has announced it will exit 11 of the 15 health-insurance exchanges where it sells Obamacare plans. Aetna’s announcement comes on the heels of news that UnitedHealthcare, Humana, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Mexico, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, and Texas’ Scott and White Health Plan, and 70% of Obamacare’s failed Co-Ops, and other insurers will exit many or all of the exchanges for which they had previously shown such enthusiasm.The ongoing and nationwide exodus of insurers is just the latest piece of evidence that Obamacare is a failed law built on false promises.

Obama Using Communist Thug Intimidation on Insurance Industry

Here is yet another example of how our Comrade Thug-in-Chief, Mr. Obama, is employing his community organizing/Saul Alinsky/Hugo Chavez/Vladimir Lenin/Joseph Stalin/Adolf Hitler-like tactics to further his anti-American, anti-freedom, anti-choice, big government agenda.  This latest move has nothing to do with decreasing the cost of, or improving the quality of, or improving availability and access to healthcare.  It is a blatant attempt to make the insurance companies “toe the line.”  Either support our healthcare “reform,” or at least keep your mouths shut.  The evidence is out there for all to see if people are only willing to look.  This is about intimidation.

One and only one “mainstream” news outlet offers ANY alternative point of view to the Obama administration, or questions ANY of his policies and appointments, and the left led by Obama attack and intimidate them calling them “illegitimate,” and worse.  Obama and the “White House” attack individuals such as Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh for voicing their opinions (which have proven to be factual nearly 100% of the time).

Can’t you see what’s REALLY happening here?

Obama is attacking and attempting to destroy the 1st Amendment.

When he succeeds in silencing the likes of the insurance companies, car companies (already done), banks (already done), Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and conservative talk radio, do you think YOU will be allowed to voice your opinion if it differs from Obama’s?  If you do, you’re a fool.

Below are some of my previous posts with supporting articles which further illustrate Obama skullduggery and the media bias that is covering it up.

(Formerly) Mainstream Media Pronounced Brain Dead, Plug to be Pulled

White House Communications Director Anita Dunn Idolizes Communist Dictator

The Obama Way:  Intimidate, Silence, and Eliminate the Competition

Lesson in Objective Reporting (Wisdom of Solomon Blog) (youtube link HERE)

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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704500604574485160248832466.html?mod=googlenews_wsj#printMode

• OCTOBER 21, 2009, 9:47 A.M. ET

Competition and Health Insurance

Contrary to Democratic rhetoric, repealing the insurance industry’s antitrust exemption won’t reduce prices or profits.

By SCOTT HARRINGTON

During his weekly radio address last Saturday, President Obama attacked health insurers for allegedly making excessive profits and paying excessive bonuses, for spreading “bogus” misinformation about the impact of Democrats’ reform agenda on the cost of health insurance, and for “figuring out how to avoid covering people.” He opined that health insurers are “earning these profits and bonuses while enjoying a privileged exemption from our antitrust laws, a matter that Congress is rightfully reviewing.”

Mr. Obama’s comments followed hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. In an unusual move, Majority Leader Harry Reid testified as a witness, alleging that “exempting health insurance companies [from antitrust] has had a negative effect on the American people” and that “there is no reason why insurance companies should be allowed to form monopolies and dictate health choices.”

Such populist rhetoric might exert additional pressure on insurers to fall (back) into line behind the Democratic reform agenda. But there is no evidence that their antitrust exemption has contributed to higher health insurance costs, premiums or profits, or, as implied by Sen. Reid, of “health insurance monopolies . . . making health-care decisions for patients.”

The legislative basis for the insurance antitrust exemption is the 1945 McCarran-Ferguson Act, which also codified state insurance regulation as national policy. This statute exempts the “business of insurance” from federal antitrust law provided that the activities are (1) regulated by state law and (2) do not involve boycott, coercion or intimidation. Its passage followed a 1944 Supreme Court ruling that insurance was interstate commerce and therefore subject to federal antitrust law—a ruling that cast doubt on states’ exclusive regulatory role, and the legality of then typical agreements among property and casualty insurers to use rates developed jointly by state or regional insurance rating organizations.

Most states responded to McCarran-Ferguson by enacting or modifying laws giving regulators authority over property/casualty insurance rates, including those developed by rating organizations. The next several decades saw a steady erosion of the role of collective pricing systems in conjunction with increased price competition, less price regulation, and a significant narrowing of the antitrust exemption’s scope by the courts.

The traditional debate about the antitrust exemption involved property/casualty insurance and medical malpractice liability coverage. Subject to state regulation or prohibition, property/casualty rating organizations collect and analyze loss costs and disseminate projections of future losses. And insurers, subject to state law, can incorporate these forecasts in their ratemaking.

In principle, this system helps produce more accurate rates, thus improving financial stability. More important, it reduces entry barriers for small insurers or insurers entering new markets. Small property/casualty insurers are particularly strong supporters of the antitrust exemption, which allows the sharing of loss projections.

None of this is germane to health insurance, where insurers do not jointly develop forecasts of future medical costs for use in pricing. The antitrust exemption also does not prevent review and challenge of mergers of health insurers by the Department of Justice, which, for example, challenged the 2005 merger of UnitedHealth Group and PacifiCare, and obtained a consent decree requiring the divestiture of certain portions of PacifiCare’s commercial health business.

Mergers and acquisitions of health insurers also are generally subject to approval by state regulators. Earlier this year, Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner Joel Ario derailed a proposed merger between the state’s two largest health insurers, Highmark and Independence Blue Cross.

Repealing the antitrust exemption for health insurers would not significantly increase competition, and it would not make health-insurance coverage either less expensive or more available. There is no evidence that the exemption has increased health insurers’ prices or profits or contributed to higher market concentration.

Repealing the antitrust exemption would also not lower the cost of malpractice insurance, or prevent future malpractice insurance crises, such as those that occurred in the mid-1970s, mid-1980s, and earlier this decade. It would instead tend to reduce rate accuracy and undermine competition in already fragile malpractice markets.

In other words, the insurance industry’s antitrust exemption is inconsequential to the health-care reform debate. It just distracts attention from important issues and further demonizes private health insurance.

Rhetoric about monopoly notwithstanding, Congress’s reform proposals are not designed to increase competition in private health insurance. The House bill proposes a government-run insurer. The Senate Finance Committee proposes creation of quasi-public cooperatives. Both bills (and the Senate HELP bill) include restrictions on health insurance underwriting, pricing, profitability and policy design that would essentially turn private health insurers into regulated public utilities.

If the goal were to promote robust concentration in private health insurance, Congress would focus on reducing impediments to competition. It could do so by allowing consumers to buy insurance across state lines at terms that do not require them to subsidize other buyers or to buy coverage for state-mandated benefits they are unwilling to pay for. Congress could also eliminate tax and regulatory rules that favor employment-based coverage over individual coverage.

In short, the rationale for repealing the insurance antitrust exemption is—to borrow a word used by Mr. Obama in his radio address—bogus.

Mr. Harrington is professor of health-care management and insurance and risk management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

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