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The End of ObamaCare?
April 19, 2016
MyTechnologyLawyer
UnitedHealth Group is abandoning ObamaCare after estimated losses of more than one Billion Dollars in 2015 and 2016. As the Nation's largest health insurer, UHG will only be actively participating in a handful of exchanges in 2017.
UnitedHealth is not the only insurer losing money on ObamaCare. Highmark (the Nation's fourth largest Blue Cross Plan) lost $600 Million in 2015. Similarly, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina has projected losses of more than $400 Million in 2015 and 2016. Both insurers are contemplating following the lead of UnitedHealth and getting out of the ObamaCare exchanges entirely.
These commercial insurers are being replaced by Medicaid Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) offering skeletal plans mirroring Medicaid - the Nation's emergency health insurance program for the impoverished. Those insureds who originally were forced from satisfactory commercial plans to ObamaCare are likely to be hit with not only increasing premiums but inadequate insurance coverage.
The results suggest the end of ObamaCare. As these insureds leave the system in search of adequate private plans, the economics of ObamaCare become increasingly impossible. Under these pressures, the system is unlikely to survive - at least in its current form.
The thanks goes to Marco Rubio. Although the Senator from Florida has been criticized for being inactive in the US Senate, his leadership on ObamaCare has saved the Nation from socialized medicine. The original ObamaCare legislation allowed the US Government to bail-out these insurers using general revenue funds. Last year, Senator Rubio inserted language in the Omnibus Government Spending Bill barring the use of taxpayer funds in bailing out health insurers from ObamaCare losses. The result is a collapse of participation in the program by private insurers.
We now have a second opportunity to re-think healthcare in this country. Surely the lessons learned from ObamaCare over the last four years recommend the value of competition, patient choice, individualized plans and state governance. If republicans can lead on this issue, the reward in November may well be The White House.
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