DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: Christians4LessGvt on November 19, 2015, 06:20:39 PM
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Major insurer may leave ObamaCare
By Sarah Ferris - 11/19/15
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One of the country's largest health insurers warned Thursday that it may leave the ObamaCare exchanges within two years, delivering a shock announcement that could ripple through the marketplace.
At a shareholder meeting Thursday, UnitedHealthcare cast doubt on its ability to carry plans on the healthcare law's exchanges beyond 2016, offering a more grim financial outlook than it had previously expected.
"In recent weeks, growth expectations for individual exchange participation have tempered industry-wide," said Stephen Hemsley, the company's CEO.
"Co-operatives have failed, and market data has signaled higher risks and more difficulties while our own claims experience has deteriorated, so we are taking this proactive step," he said.
The company's statement said it will be "evaluating the viability of the insurance exchange product segment and will determine during the first half of 2016 to what extent it can continue to serve the public exchange markets in 2017."
It also projected that its fourth-quarter revenue will be $425 million less than expected, amounting to 26 cents in earnings per share.
The company also announced it has "pulled back" on marketing plans for 2016.
Hemsley's mention of the ObamaCare co-operatives, or co-ops, refers to the half-dozen startup insurers that have collapsed in the past few weeks.
Opponents of the healthcare law have seized on the closure of the co-op insurers, which were intended to increase competition, and highlighted the troubles in hearings on Capitol Hill.
Fewer than half of the original 23 co-ops are still running, and only a handful are on solid financial footing.
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/260758-unitedhealthcare-may-exit-obamacare-exchanges
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Somewhen in the future , when the Smoot-Hawley tariff and the Dred Scott decision and the battle of the Little Big horn are studied as examples of how to not do things, Obamacare will be on the syllabus for a week.
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No.
Obamacare will be like the first trips on the Union Pacific to California. Something to be improved upon that would never have existed in any form if Republican'ts had been in charge.
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No.
Obamacare will be like the first trips on the Union Pacific to California. Something to be improved upon that would never have existed in any form if Republican'ts had been in charge.
Why do you think this?
Better than 80% felt well served by health insurance before Obamacare?
How long will Obamacare take to reach 80% approval?
If ever.
It was foolish to smash a working system and replace it with a hastily composed one, even if it is intended as a framework for improvement.
What prevents improvement without smashing the imperfect and mostly good system?
Hasn't it long been said that the worst enemy of good is perfection?
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well Im not one of those who can say insurance before obamacare was better. I was denied coverage for having a fatal pre-existing condition. at best I can get coverage as long it has nothing to do with my condition and thats with a job.
here`s where i`m a hypacrite. I will do eveything to not get obamacare. It`s just too new and too shabbily written for me. this very post is proof of this. what gets my goat is that thiers a much larger issue which nobody will address and zero effort.
hearthcare cost too much and insurance is totaly and completely not the answer. childbirth should not be this costly. the margin fatality to do without a doctor is quite small sometimes worst with a doctor.
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The MDA and the Insurance companies form a powerful lobby , they hold forth for high standards of quality and requirement s for training.
They also keep fees and prices high , preventing lesser trained technicians and midwives from acting without supervision protecting monopoly and splitting fees with specialists.
Perhaps there will come a day that a lot of a Doctors functions can be automated or handled by robots. Deep Blue is a system that could be made into a competent diagnostician.
Surgeons jobs are probably safe until sometime after someone designs a robot that can fold a shirt.
Also we could train a lot of Nurses that would have more freedom to make diagnoses and prescribe medicine , these half -doctors might have a lesser college degree and would defer and refer to fully fledged doctors when necessary. If we do this would not be our invention.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barefoot_doctor
http://glasshospital.com/2015/04/05/barefoot-doctors/
(http://glasshospital.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/DSC_4075.jpg)
One concept worth learning about if you’ve never heard of it: “Barefoot Doctors.” Founding Premier Mao Zedong unleashed these “paramedical” folks into the countryside in the 1960s to offer help with prevention and primary care. One result: a stunning drop in infant mortality. The analogue in our own age is the concept of the community health worker, something that has garnered press and continues to be an alluring possible solution to our own problems of translating medical knowledge gains out into our communities.
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We did NOT have a system that worked for 30% of the population.
United Healthcare sponsored my first Medicare Advantage HMO, allied with AARP. I had no objections, but they sent me a lett0er saying that they were discontinuing my plan and they said nothing about offering another plan. So I enrolled in Humana, which is also pretty good. I like the options of the Silver Sneaker exercise program, even though there are never more than three men and often no men present.
Two weeks after I signed up with Humana, United Healthcare sent me a description of a new plan, which was almost entirely like the previou8sl one, only not sponsored by AARP.
So I think it is possible that United Healthcare uses this tactic of threatening to quit to get bigger benefits of something.
And now AARP offers an HMO Advantage plan using United Healthcare.
\\It makes little sense for them to do this? I was certainly a profitable customer.
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well Im not one of those who can say insurance before obamacare was better. I was denied coverage for having a fatal pre-existing condition. at best I can get coverage as long it has nothing to do with my condition and thats with a job.
here`s where i`m a hypacrite. I will do eveything to not get obamacare. It`s just too new and too shabbily written for me. this very post is proof of this. what gets my goat is that thiers a much larger issue which nobody will address and zero effort.
hearthcare cost too much and insurance is totaly and completely not the answer. childbirth should not be this costly. the margin fatality to do without a doctor is quite small sometimes worst with a doctor.
And I can totally sympathize with that position, Kimba. Had Congress worked on addressing that specific issue, one of pre-existing conditions, we could easily have had a bi-partisan proposal, that would have addressed your needs, while still providing the vast majority of the rest of the country a system they were perfectly content with....in particular the ability to keep their Doctor(s) and their Plans, if they liked them
The thing is, that's not what Obamacare was about, and never was. While there may have been a handful of folks who were enthralled and supported the notion of universal healthcare, the crux of Obamacare, as validated by its complete 1 party alone passage, was to gut the private care system, and force more people into having to rely on the Government. They could try to play the #'s game, and even bald face lie about how it would "bring down healthcare costs", but ultimately that was never a part of the plan. In order for Democrats to stay in power, more people must support Government services. And there's no better way than that, than mandating healthcare coverage, dictated by the Government
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It was foolish to smash a working system and replace it with a hastily composed one,
even if it is intended as a framework for improvement.
very well said Plane!
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Perhaps there will come a day that a lot of a Doctors functions can be automated or handled by robots.
Plane it's already happening....
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J&J's Sedasys Puts Challenge to Anesthesiologists
Anesthesiologists typically charge $600 to $2,000 for their involvement.
Sedasys would cost about $150 a procedure.
http://blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2013/09/26/jjs-sedasys-puts-challenge-to-anesthesiologists/
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I had a colonoscopy last year. The anesthesiologist may have spent 15 minutes with me. She was very nice and professional. So were all the people there.
My Humana Advantage paid for the whole thing. The "official" price was four times the amount that the insurance company paid.
Medical care is grotesquely overpriced. There is no competition for those that have no insurance.
If you have a stroke or an accident, you cannot bargain for a lower price. The hospital will not even reveal the cost of any procedure in most cases.
Capitalism does not work in healthcare. It does not even work worth a damn with prescriptions. "We do not give prices over the phone, sir, you will have to come in" And wait in line behind another dozen people. Only power of government can force reasonable prices.
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"We do not give prices over the phone, sir, you will have to come in" And wait in line behind another dozen people. Only power of government can force reasonable prices.
Woah I don't like that.
I would definitely go to some other Pharmacies first.
Preventing competition whether in cost or in excellence should be considered un-American.
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We did NOT have a system that worked for 30% of the population.
Where do you get this estimate?
Seems high .
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I had a colonoscopy last year. The anesthesiologist may have spent 15 minutes with me. She was very nice and professional. So were all the people there.
My Humana Advantage paid for the whole thing. The "official" price was four times the amount that the insurance company paid.
Medical care is grotesquely overpriced. There is no competition for those that have no insurance.
If you have a stroke or an accident, you cannot bargain for a lower price. The hospital will not even reveal the cost of any procedure in most cases.
Capitalism does not work in healthcare. It does not even work worth a damn with prescriptions. "We do not give prices over the phone, sir, you will have to come in" And wait in line behind another dozen people. Only power of government can force reasonable prices.
Capitalism could work better than it does.
The insurance companies should be negotiating price , and monitoring quality.
The insurance companies have the clout and the interest , more than the government does.
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Hospitals do not like to give figures for procedures or operations. It keeps the Business Office from getting creative.
They bill for medicine not dispensed, materials not used, and time.
When my father died, the hospital billed him for the day after he died. he left the building at 10:00 in the morning on the 16th, and they charged for the 17th.
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My mom got the ambulance bill three years later and it artive months after she passed. I had to pay it or it'll effect the sale of my house. The real issue for me is thier at fault for not even billing me. They actually just wait and let it go to collecttions. I know because all my ambulance bills come from collections. Never straight from the service .
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They prefer to use the collection agency as their billing dept. Tenet Healthcare in Miami does the same thing.
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But these delays can go up to several years and makes it harder to get insurance to pay for it.
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I agree. But a lot of healthcare companies are hideously incompetent.
I got some sort of creepy crawly thing called 'larval migrans" under the shin of my legs when working in my yard.
The insurance company that my cllege inflicted on us told me to go to a Tenet Healthcare operated hospital in Hialeah. I went to the ER and after five houras they finally attended to me. There were only three people there that night.
The doctor gave me a shot and a prescription that ended to horrible itching. On the way out, I went to the hospital business office with my checkbook and tried to pay them. They refused payment, saying, "We will bill you". The bill arrived seven months later from some nasty threatening collection agency.
I got the name of the head administrator and sent him a check for the amount ($125, as I recall) in an envelope labeled PERSONAL and URGENT and sent it by registered mail, receipt required. I told him I did not owe any collection agency anything. I sent a copy to the Miami-Dade Co.Consumer Complaint Dept.
And that was the last I heard of it.
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Isnt it more costly for them to use collections instead of just trying to simply bill first. The fact i never got a bill not from collections says they tried.
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Kimba...my credit score took a small hit several years ago because I refused to pay for an ambulance ride. I was at a surgery center having a procedure done and the doctor screwed up and had to call an ambulance to take me to the hospital. Then they tried to bill me $350 for the 1 mile ambulance ride. The doctor did admit it was his mistake that caused the ambulance ride, but he refused to pay the ambulance bill, plus he still charged me for the failed procedure. Go figure? Out of principle I never paid the ambulance bill. Looking back a bit older and wiser, I probably should have reluctantly paid the ambulance company because it wasn't their fault the doctor refused to do the right thing and they did provide me a service I needed at the time.
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$350 for an ambulance ride that you did not agree in advance to pay for?
They can eat that, and should.
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$350 for an ambulance ride that you did not agree in advance to pay for? They can eat that, and should.
How could I have "agreed to in advance" to what turned out to be an unexpected
possible emergency situation when the procedure went wrong? The doctor that screwed
up should have paid for it....it's not the ambulance company's fault. They were
called and did their job.
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You actually believe that a one mile ride to a hospital is worth $350?
You have more wrong with you that physical illness.
I agree that the doctor should have paid. The ambulance company could have made him pay. If they didn't, that is THEIR problem.
It would be interesting to delve into the books of that ambulance company and see how many people also refused to pay their outrageous fees.
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Actually thats extremely cheap compare to my area. Mine average $1,200
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You actually believe that a one mile ride to a hospital is worth $350?
You so often expose how little you understand about business.
You have a very shallow short-sighted naive logic about business.
You see a $350 ambulance fee and think outrage...
You have no idea how much 24/7 staffing of emergency professional medical personnel costs.
I am sure you at the same time think these emergency medical technicians deserve a "decent wage".
But they may sit around half of a day "on-call ready to roll" but the company still has to pay them.
You also have no idea what it costs to buy and operate a 24/7 medical emergency room on wheels.
Can you imagine the liability if the ambulance won't start? Or if the heart paddles short circuit? etc...etc...
Have you priced emergency life saving medical equipment and the costs to maintain it in perfect order?
Not to mention the costs of liability and litigation in the medical emergency industry.
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I believe its a straight amount since my bill has been a fairly same amount no matter the distant. After my experience i will take a cab if possible.
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Well, you are the one that stiffed the Ambulance company, CU4, not me.
I fell off my roof when a ladder slipped about 16 years ago. My wife called the EMT and they told me what they would charge to take me to a hospital, so I got my wife to drive me. I was seriously bruised, but up and around again after two days, nothing broken.
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After my experience i will take a cab if possible.
i was unconscious, with a possible perforated esophagus so that wouldn't have worked.
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Well, you are the one that stiffed the Ambulance company, CU4, not me.
Yes exactly and looking back I admit that I believe it was a mistake.
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You can always get out the old checkbook.
It is almost a sure thing that they will not return it.
It's not what I would do, but I am not you.
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You can always get out the old checkbook. It is almost a sure thing that they will not return it.
It's not what I would do, but I am not you.
Yes I think after revisiting the issue I should do the right thing.
It's been several years, but I am going to look for the notices and see if I can pay them.
At the time I was like "I got screwed by X, so it's ok to screw Y".
Wiser...I now see the error of that kind of logic.
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In that case of course