The Obamacare deaths knell maybe sounding for individual policy holders. Aetna announced that public exchanges are unsustainable and they may have to forgo further participation despite federal government subsidies. However, there is a profitable teat this crony is all too willing to suckle from: Medicaid.
The Affordable Care Act udder is full of taxpayer dollars. Insurers are finding out it’s much more profitable
to do business with a federal government single-payer system than it is forcing
citizens to buy their product. Here is
an excerpt from the Charlotte Observer.
Aetna
regretted its decision, said CEO Mark Bertolini in the statement, but doing
business in the Obamacare marketplaces created “significant sustainability
concerns.”
It’s the same
complaint other insurers have voiced about Obamacare, and it mirrors what
Bertolini said just two weeks ago in a second-quarter earnings call. But
earlier this year, Bertolini let slip another figure that didn’t make it into
Monday’s six paragraphs: Aetna enjoyed a record $6.5 billion in government program premiums in
the first quarter.
In other words,
doing business with the government isn’t so bad after all. In fact, it’s gotten
especially good since Obamacare came along, thanks largely to the Affordable
Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid in most states (but not yet North Carolina.)
Medicaid, like Medicare, offers the best of most worlds for insurers – it’s
single-payer, government-financed insurance, and it has low enrollee costs. So
while insurers like to gripe about the individual Obamacare exchanges, they
have no issues with the big Medicaid profits that Obamacare helps provide.
A single-payer system has been the end
game all along. Is it any wonder
Democrats, big hospitals and insurers have advocated states expand their
Medicaid rolls?
If they can’t force us to buy an
overpriced, crappy product; they sure as hell will find a way to force us to
enroll on a government program with crappy service. Crony capitalism is expropriating the
American way of life.
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