05-11-2017, 10:02 PM
*** 12-May-17 World View -- Obamacare continues total meltdown as Aetna pulls out completely
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
****
**** Obamacare continues total meltdown as Aetna pulls out completely
****
![[Image: g170511b.jpg]](http://Media.GenerationalDynamics.com/ww2010/g170511b.jpg)
CNBC reporter Bertha Coombs is furious that Aetna is pulling out of Virginia Obamacare (CNBC)
Obamacare continued its multi-year meltdown and death spiral on
Wednesday when Aetna said it will completely leave the Obamacare
business at the end of the year. According to Aetna:
> [indent]<QUOTE>"Our individual commercial products lost nearly $700
> million between 2014 and 2016, and are projected to lose more than
> $200 million in 2017 despite a significant reduction in
> membership."<END QUOTE>[/indent]
Obamacare would have collapsed on day one, but President Obama
confiscated $716 billion in the Medicare insurance fund to providing
funding for Obamacare entities. This is money that workers have been
paying into the fund for decades, and Obama just blew it all away.
The signs that Obamacare was collapsing have been clear now for almost
two years, as several large insurance companies, UnitedHealthCare,
Humana, BlueCross BlueShield, and others, have announced partial or
complete pullouts from Obamacare because of massive financial losses.
Aetna had previously announced a partial pullout, but now the pullout
is complete.
There have been astronomical price increases on health insurance in
each year of Obamacare, and the next year is no exception. The first
states to make their filings public for next year are Maryland,
Virginia and Connecticut, and they're announcing premium increases of
more than 20%.
Furthermore, fully 1/3 of the counties in the United States have only
one insurance option available.
This is exactly what I predicted in 2009, shortly after Obamacare was
first announced, when I called it a proposal of economic insanity.
The reason I knew what would happen is because I remember well what
happened with President Richard Nixon's price controls in the early
1970s. They were supposed to lower the inflation rate from 4% to 2%.
Instead, the inflation rate surged to 12%.
Let me repeat that. The inflation rate had been 4%. Nixon wanted to
reduce it to 2% with wage-price controls. Instead, it went up to 12%.
One thing that I remember well is that farmers were killing baby
chickens because chickens were price-controlled, but chicken feed was
not. So if the farmers allowed the chickens to grow, then it would
cost more to feed than the price Nixon's controls would allow the
farmer to sell the chicken. It was an absolute disaster for the
economy, and the economy didn't recover for a full decade. This shows
how Nixon's controls so thoroughly destroyed the American economy,
resulting it huge inflation rates.
I predicted that the same thing would happen with Obamacare, and that
prediction was 100% correct. The reason I knew what would happen is
because I still remembered Nixon's price controls. Health insurance
inflation is now increasing at over 20% per year, and insurers are
dropping out because it costs more to insure them than the premiums
that they're allowed to collect.
Furthermore, millions more people than ever are effectively uninsured,
either because the deductibles are so high that they can't collect
insurance, or because they can't find a doctor that will accept their
Medicaid insurance.
Obamacare has been a total disaster. It's destroyed the health
insurance industry so thoroughly that it's causing huge rate increase,
and the health insurance industry will take ten years to recover.
In 2015, I spent three months doing a detailed analysis of Obamacare,
and wrote an article about it.
I was absolutely stunned by the sheer stupidity of this law. One
example is "Risk Corridors." If an insurer is profitable, then the
insurer pays profits into a "risk corridor fund" set up by the Centers
for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). If the insurer is losing
money, then that insurer receives money out of the fund.
As I drilled down into this, I couldn't believe what I was reading.
Why would any insurer even try to be profitable, if their profits were
simply going to be confiscated? If an insurer had some extra money,
they might as well spend it, since they were going to lose the money
anyway.
Risk Corridors is just one example of some of the stupidest things
I've ever seen, and it shows the stupidity of the people in the Obama
administration who pushed this piece of crap.
So now Obamacare is totally collapsing, and the Democrats and
Republicans are jockeying to see who's going to get the blame as the
disaster unfolds. It makes you want to vomit, but that's nothing new
in Washington these days. Reuters and Bloomberg and Daily Signal
Related Articles
****
**** Britain's NHS patients wait for months just to get bowel cancer tests
****
According to new figures published on Thursday, patients in Britain's
National Health Service have to wait several months to get diagnostic
tests when they're suspected of having bowel cancer. This is one of
the most lethal forms of cancer, and patients could die in the
meantime.
The mainstream media in Britain rarely mentions this, and you never
hear it from the American media, but Britain's National Health Service
is a growing financial disaster that is near collapse. As I've been
reporting since 2015, Britain's National Health Service (NHS) is
facing an existential crisis, with a huge and accelerating deficit
expected to reach 22 billion pounds ($32 billion) by 2020.
You would think that at least emergency situations would be covered
adequately by the NHS, but the bowel cancer example shows that they're
not.
The financial crisis has caused so many hospitals to close that there
was a shortage of beds early this year, and patients arriving in
ambulances had to remain outside the hospital in the ambulances for
several hours, until a bed could be made available.
My favorite example is that if you have a toothache, then it can take
a couple of months to get an appointment with a dentist, so you'd have
to live with your toothache for a couple of months. Dentistry
services are so bad that people are buying "do-it-yourself (DIY)
dentistry kits" to take care of their whole families, as was done in
the Middle Ages.
Whenever anyone talks to me about Obamacare, they tell me about how
they like getting subsidized health care, or they like to be able to
wait until they're actually sick before they get health insurance.
Well, it's nice to get things for free, isn't it? I know that I've
always loved getting things for free. It's so nice. Unfortunately,
it leads to financial disaster, as happened with Nixon's price
controls, with Britain's NHS, and with Obamacare.
Why doesn't Congress just pass a law outlawing hurricanes and
earthquakes? Wouldn't that save a lot of lives? Guardian (London)
Related Articles
****
**** Criminal Veterans Administration director has firing overturned
****
Sharon Helman, the former director of the Veterans Administration
hospital in Phoenix, has had her firing overturned by a federal
appellate court.
Helman has a criminal conviction for taking bribes from lobbyists, and
had been director when it was revealed that veterans were dying
because they couldn't get care that they were entitled to, and that
Helman and other hospital directors were lying about wait times.
Like Obamacare and Britain's NHS, the Veterans Administration's
health care system is a financial disaster waiting to collapse. And
one reason is that even a criminally-convicted perpetrator cannot be
fired. USA Today
Related Articles
KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Aetna, Obamacare,
UnitedHealthCare, Humana, BlueCross BlueShield,
Richard Nixon, wage-price controls, Risk Corridors,
Britain, National Health Service, bowel cancer,
do-it-yourself dentistry, Sharon Helman, Veterans Administration
Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal
John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe
This morning's key headlines from GenerationalDynamics.com
- Obamacare continues total meltdown as Aetna pulls out completely
- Britain's NHS patients wait for months just to get bowel cancer tests
- Criminal Veterans Administration director has firing overturned
****
**** Obamacare continues total meltdown as Aetna pulls out completely
****
CNBC reporter Bertha Coombs is furious that Aetna is pulling out of Virginia Obamacare (CNBC)
Obamacare continued its multi-year meltdown and death spiral on
Wednesday when Aetna said it will completely leave the Obamacare
business at the end of the year. According to Aetna:
> [indent]<QUOTE>"Our individual commercial products lost nearly $700
> million between 2014 and 2016, and are projected to lose more than
> $200 million in 2017 despite a significant reduction in
> membership."<END QUOTE>[/indent]
Obamacare would have collapsed on day one, but President Obama
confiscated $716 billion in the Medicare insurance fund to providing
funding for Obamacare entities. This is money that workers have been
paying into the fund for decades, and Obama just blew it all away.
The signs that Obamacare was collapsing have been clear now for almost
two years, as several large insurance companies, UnitedHealthCare,
Humana, BlueCross BlueShield, and others, have announced partial or
complete pullouts from Obamacare because of massive financial losses.
Aetna had previously announced a partial pullout, but now the pullout
is complete.
There have been astronomical price increases on health insurance in
each year of Obamacare, and the next year is no exception. The first
states to make their filings public for next year are Maryland,
Virginia and Connecticut, and they're announcing premium increases of
more than 20%.
Furthermore, fully 1/3 of the counties in the United States have only
one insurance option available.
This is exactly what I predicted in 2009, shortly after Obamacare was
first announced, when I called it a proposal of economic insanity.
The reason I knew what would happen is because I remember well what
happened with President Richard Nixon's price controls in the early
1970s. They were supposed to lower the inflation rate from 4% to 2%.
Instead, the inflation rate surged to 12%.
Let me repeat that. The inflation rate had been 4%. Nixon wanted to
reduce it to 2% with wage-price controls. Instead, it went up to 12%.
One thing that I remember well is that farmers were killing baby
chickens because chickens were price-controlled, but chicken feed was
not. So if the farmers allowed the chickens to grow, then it would
cost more to feed than the price Nixon's controls would allow the
farmer to sell the chicken. It was an absolute disaster for the
economy, and the economy didn't recover for a full decade. This shows
how Nixon's controls so thoroughly destroyed the American economy,
resulting it huge inflation rates.
I predicted that the same thing would happen with Obamacare, and that
prediction was 100% correct. The reason I knew what would happen is
because I still remembered Nixon's price controls. Health insurance
inflation is now increasing at over 20% per year, and insurers are
dropping out because it costs more to insure them than the premiums
that they're allowed to collect.
Furthermore, millions more people than ever are effectively uninsured,
either because the deductibles are so high that they can't collect
insurance, or because they can't find a doctor that will accept their
Medicaid insurance.
Obamacare has been a total disaster. It's destroyed the health
insurance industry so thoroughly that it's causing huge rate increase,
and the health insurance industry will take ten years to recover.
In 2015, I spent three months doing a detailed analysis of Obamacare,
and wrote an article about it.
I was absolutely stunned by the sheer stupidity of this law. One
example is "Risk Corridors." If an insurer is profitable, then the
insurer pays profits into a "risk corridor fund" set up by the Centers
for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). If the insurer is losing
money, then that insurer receives money out of the fund.
As I drilled down into this, I couldn't believe what I was reading.
Why would any insurer even try to be profitable, if their profits were
simply going to be confiscated? If an insurer had some extra money,
they might as well spend it, since they were going to lose the money
anyway.
Risk Corridors is just one example of some of the stupidest things
I've ever seen, and it shows the stupidity of the people in the Obama
administration who pushed this piece of crap.
So now Obamacare is totally collapsing, and the Democrats and
Republicans are jockeying to see who's going to get the blame as the
disaster unfolds. It makes you want to vomit, but that's nothing new
in Washington these days. Reuters and Bloomberg and Daily Signal
Related Articles
- History of President Richard Nixon's Wage-Price Controls (5-Jul-13)
- Healthcare.gov -- The greatest software development disaster in history (23-Aug-2015)
- Obama's health plan, a proposal of economic insanity (25-July-2009)
****
**** Britain's NHS patients wait for months just to get bowel cancer tests
****
According to new figures published on Thursday, patients in Britain's
National Health Service have to wait several months to get diagnostic
tests when they're suspected of having bowel cancer. This is one of
the most lethal forms of cancer, and patients could die in the
meantime.
The mainstream media in Britain rarely mentions this, and you never
hear it from the American media, but Britain's National Health Service
is a growing financial disaster that is near collapse. As I've been
reporting since 2015, Britain's National Health Service (NHS) is
facing an existential crisis, with a huge and accelerating deficit
expected to reach 22 billion pounds ($32 billion) by 2020.
You would think that at least emergency situations would be covered
adequately by the NHS, but the bowel cancer example shows that they're
not.
The financial crisis has caused so many hospitals to close that there
was a shortage of beds early this year, and patients arriving in
ambulances had to remain outside the hospital in the ambulances for
several hours, until a bed could be made available.
My favorite example is that if you have a toothache, then it can take
a couple of months to get an appointment with a dentist, so you'd have
to live with your toothache for a couple of months. Dentistry
services are so bad that people are buying "do-it-yourself (DIY)
dentistry kits" to take care of their whole families, as was done in
the Middle Ages.
Whenever anyone talks to me about Obamacare, they tell me about how
they like getting subsidized health care, or they like to be able to
wait until they're actually sick before they get health insurance.
Well, it's nice to get things for free, isn't it? I know that I've
always loved getting things for free. It's so nice. Unfortunately,
it leads to financial disaster, as happened with Nixon's price
controls, with Britain's NHS, and with Obamacare.
Why doesn't Congress just pass a law outlawing hurricanes and
earthquakes? Wouldn't that save a lot of lives? Guardian (London)
Related Articles
- Britain's National Health Service (NHS) faces existential financial crisis (05-Aug-2015)
- Obamacare and Britain's NHS continue in financial 'death spiral' (16-Feb-2017)
- Britain's hospitals run out of beds as Red Cross declares NHS in 'humanitarian crisis' (08-Jan-2017)
- Britain's National Health Service (NHS) forced to close emergency rooms (14-Nov-2016)
****
**** Criminal Veterans Administration director has firing overturned
****
Sharon Helman, the former director of the Veterans Administration
hospital in Phoenix, has had her firing overturned by a federal
appellate court.
Helman has a criminal conviction for taking bribes from lobbyists, and
had been director when it was revealed that veterans were dying
because they couldn't get care that they were entitled to, and that
Helman and other hospital directors were lying about wait times.
Like Obamacare and Britain's NHS, the Veterans Administration's
health care system is a financial disaster waiting to collapse. And
one reason is that even a criminally-convicted perpetrator cannot be
fired. USA Today
Related Articles
KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Aetna, Obamacare,
UnitedHealthCare, Humana, BlueCross BlueShield,
Richard Nixon, wage-price controls, Risk Corridors,
Britain, National Health Service, bowel cancer,
do-it-yourself dentistry, Sharon Helman, Veterans Administration
Permanent web link to this article
Receive daily World View columns by e-mail
Contribute to Generational Dynamics via PayPal
John J. Xenakis
100 Memorial Drive Apt 8-13A
Cambridge, MA 02142
Phone: 617-864-0010
E-mail: john@GenerationalDynamics.com
Web site: http://www.GenerationalDynamics.com
Forum: http://www.gdxforum.com/forum
Subscribe to World View: http://generationaldynamics.com/subscribe
