Obamacare Money Grab Buys Insurance Companies’ Support
Posted on 01/19/2014 6:52:02 AM PST by KeyLargo
Bailing Out Health Insurers and Helping Obamacare Jeffrey H. Anderson January 13, 2014
Robert Laszewski—a prominent consultant to health insurance companies—recently wrote in a remarkably candid blog post that, while Obamacare is almost certain to cause insurance costs to skyrocket even higher than it already has, “insurers won’t be losing a lot of sleep over it.” How can this be? Because insurance companies won’t bear the cost of their own losses—at least not more than about a quarter of them. The other three-quarters will be borne by American taxpayers.
For some reason, President Obama hasn’t talked about this particular feature of his signature legislation. Indeed, it’s bad enough that Obamacare is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to funnel $1,071,000,000,000.00 (that’s $1.071 trillion) over the next decade (2014 to 2023) from American taxpayers, through Washington, to health insurance companies. It’s even worse that Obamacare is trying to coerce Americans into buying those same insurers’ product (although there are escape routes). It’s almost unbelievable that it will also subsidize those same insurers’ losses.
But that’s exactly what it will do—unless Republicans take action. As Laszewski explains, Obamacare contains a “Reinsurance Program that caps big claim costs for insurers (individual plans only).” He writes that “in 2014, 80% of individual costs between $45,000 and $250,000 are paid by the government [read: by taxpayers], for example.”
In other words, insurance purchased through Obamacare’s government-run exchanges isn’t even full-fledged private insurance; rather, it’s a sort of private-public hybrid. Private insurance companies pay for costs below $45,000, then taxpayers generously pick up the tab—a tab that their president hasn’t ever bothered to tell them he has opened up on their behalf—for four-fifths of the next $200,000-plus worth of costs.
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
Obamacare Money Grab Buys Insurance Companies’ Support
Just another monkey on the taxpayer’s back.
Pharma & Healthcare
1/18/2014
Health Insurance Companies See ObamaCare Medicaid Boon
Despite controversy over the Affordable Care Act, Congress and lawmakers at state capitols across the country have allowed more Medicaid patients to enroll in managed health plans. (Photo credit: Glyn Lowe Photoworks, 2 Million Views, Thanks)
As the Obama administration touts the need for uninsured Americans to sign up for private coverage via exchanges under the Affordable Care Act, the insurance industry sees growth in an expanded Medicaid program for the poor under the health law.
This week, the chief executive of the nation’s largest health insurance company and a new analysis indicate major growth ahead for health plans that have contracts with state Medicaid programs thanks in large part to President Obama’s signature legislative achievement.
As state budgets have been hurt by the stagnant economy, lawmakers have turned more patients eligible for Medicaid over to privately-contracted insurance companies. Now, the health law provides a cash infusion of more than $900 billion in federal dollars from 2014 to 2022 to expand Medicaid programs for states interested in the proposition.
“We expect to realize strong growth by serving in several ways: as established Medicaid programs grow through the ACA expansions; as eligible Medicaid prospects are identified through the federal and state exchange markets; and as the inevitable dual eligible …initiatives begin to form and are implemented,” UnitedHealth Group (UNH) chief executive officer Stephen J. Hemsley said on the company’s 2013 fourth-quarter and full-year earnings call earlier this week...
“...it’s bad enough that Obamacare is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to funnel $1,071,000,000,000.00 (that’s $1.071 trillion) over the next decade (2014 to 2023) from American taxpayers, through Washington, to health insurance companies.”
”He writes that “in 2014, 80% of individual costs between $45,000 and $250,000 are paid by the government [read: by taxpayers], for example.”
“... it’s a sort of private-public hybrid.”
“...Obamacare takes a major step toward the government monopoly over American medicine (“single payer”) that liberals drool about in their sleep.”
“Thus, Obamacare is being aided by having taxpayers subsidize big insurance companies’ business expenses.”
“...taxpayers would cover 78 percent of the losses, with the insurer covering just 22 percent.”
This is a NIGHTMARE - and totally illegal...this is not a Republic anymore - and until this administration is struck down and sent to prison - the liberals and socialist will continue to degrade the US...added to the jailed Demo’s - RINO’s need to accompany them as well - a bunch of traitors...
I can’t believe we are discussing this topic and in this situation!
I believe that this is the “Bailout” that Fox News has been talking about for awhile. There will be some legislation to block this, but it will probably end up in Harry Reid’s desk drawer.
I have been consistently maintaining in recent months that ‘health care reform’ starting with Romneycare in MA and the Obamacare nationally is a bailout for health insurance companies and the health care industry in general.
Health care stocks are outperforming the massive inflated values of other stocks and the simple math of making everyone buy health insurance and cancelling old policies to replace them with new more expensive ones puts more bucks into health insurance companies.
Bailouts have become a bipartisan trend in our political system from Bush’s TARP to bail out banks and insurance companies to Obama’s stimulus to bail out labor unions and so on.
W Bush’s Medicare Part D pumped taxpayer dollars into the pharma industry to cover the costs of their products.
This is like a company that puts out a crap product but has access to other peoples money to keep the product on the shelves even though it doesn’t sell. How is this legal?
Not to worry.
Eric Holder has put the newly appointed Assistant Attorney General Barbara Bosserman on the case to investigate these Obama taxpayers kickbacks to insurance companies for their support.
Darrell Issa claims Eric Holder put Obama donor in charge of IRS Tea Party probe
By SEAN HIGGINS | JANUARY 9, 2014
Attorney General Eric Holder put a significant donor to President Obama’s campaigns in charge of the Justice Department’s probe into the IRS’s targeting of Tea Party groups, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., claimed in a letter Wednesday. According to Issa, the person running the probe is DOJ attorney Barbara Bosserman, who has donated more than $6,000 total to the Obama campaigns in 2008 and 2012.
Obamacare Will Bring Drug Industry $35 Billion In Profits
Biggest winners in Obamacare? The health insurance companies. Very “progressive.”
By Nick Sorrentino on October 15, 2013
And the media is hyping now how people are benefiting from the Obamacare insurance company bailouts, (at taxpayers expense - not mentioned).
Kadner: Print shop owner is Obamacare fan
By Phil Kadner pkadner@southtownstar.com January 16, 2014 8:08PM
Updated: January 17, 2014 4:08PM
Marvin Forbish is a businessman who thinks Obamacare is “fantastic.”
Forbish, 62, who owns D-Marv Designs, a specialty printing firm in Blue Island, explained to me Thursday how he and his son saved a “ton of money” on health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.
Forbish had an insurance policy through a private carrier but thought the premiums were too high and “some of my doctors didn’t like the insurance company.”
His son, 24, was covered by another insurer, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, “and together our premiums were $660 a month.”
Forbish is a gregarious fellow known as “Mr. Shake n’ Bake,” and a large banner touting the nickname hangs in his store.
“I called Blue Cross a couple of times trying to get a better deal on insurance, and each time I was on the phone at least 45 minutes,” he said. “You talk to one person, and they transfer you to another. One time, I was on the phone for an hour and a half, talked to four people at Blue Cross and still didn’t get my situation resolved.”
Forbish told me attended a Markham Chamber of Commerce meeting on health insurance in December and heard an insurance broker, Patrick Fox, talk about the advantages of the Affordable Care Act.
Fox is one of 13 insurance brokers designated as “ambassadors” for Get Covered Illinois, the state agency that is registering people for medical coverage under Obamacare.
“I got Mr. Fox’s business card, called him and we talked about the sort of health insurance I wanted, the type of coverage I needed and what I was paying,” Forbish said. “We discussed the options available and decided the Silver PPO plan was best for me. It’s through Blue Cross/Blue Shield, too.
“My son and I are covered under the same policy. The premium is $80.14 a month. We were paying $660 per month combined.”
That’s a savings of about $7,000 a year...
View the video of the obvious Obama voter here:
http://southtownstar.suntimes.com/news/24995811-418/kadner-print-shop-owner-is-obamacare-fan.html
This program isn’t 21 days old and is already declared bankrupt? Hell, even Social Security’s scam is still up and running. I feel more like a Christian in old Rome each day.
$1,071,000,000,000.00 over the next decade (2014 to 2023) from **American taxpayers**.
By the end of his term we will never be able to recover from the damage Obama&Co has caused.
Mission completed.
“But that’s exactly what it will do—unless Republicans take action.”
Expecting the corporatist GOPe to do something about this is crazy.
The middle class is the enemy to these people.
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