Imploding Obamacare vs. Medicaid For All
Two surprising things happened yesterday.
The first was Nevada's legislature passed a Medicaid For All bill.
The Nevada legislature approved a bill Friday that would let uninsured Nevadans join a Medicaid plan regardless of income level.The Nevada Care Plan would allow people who qualify for tax credits under the Affordable Care Act to use the credits to buy Medicaid coverage. The Medicaid plan would likely compete against private health insurance plans on the state’s health insurance marketplace.
The buy-in coverage would be the same as traditional Medicaid, except it wouldn't cover emergency medical transportation.
Gov. Brian Sandoval supports Medicaid expansion, but hasn't said whether he will sign the bill. The other hurdle is Trump's plan for $610 billion cut from Medicaid over 10 years, which would probably make Nevada's plan unaffordable.
California's single-payer bill, that is before the state Assembly now, is more sweeping, aggressive, and expensive. It's almost as if they intentionally passed a bill that they knew was far too expensive.
Also, California's plan would require a waiver from the Trump administration to redirect federal money.
New York's single-payer bill is currently before the state Senate.
The second surprising thing was Obamacare collapsed in much of Ohio.
A big Obamacare shoe just dropped in Ohio.
Health insurer Anthem said Tuesday it will effectively exit its Obamacare individual plan business in Ohio, leaving potentially 18 counties in the Buckeye State with no insurer selling plans in 2018.
Anthem, which sells Obamacare plans in 14 states this year, left open the door to dropping out of other states next year.
Roughly 10,000 Ohioans will not have health insurance next year.
Ohio is not alone.
25 counties in Missouri without any Obamacare insurance next year.
Most of Iowa and Nebraska could soon join Missouri and Ohio with Obamacare-less regions.
Tennessee’s Knoxville area narrowly avoided joining this growing group, but no one thinks that this is the end.
"Anthem’s exit from Ohio could be the tip of the iceberg," Cox told Business Insider in an email.
"Their reasons for leaving don’t appear to be specific to Ohio, rather about political and regulatory uncertainty coming from the White House and Congress. If Anthem leaves the market nationally, there could be hundreds of thousands of people without any exchange insurer."
...
Anthem's move follows a cascade of insurer exits in states such as Nebraska, Virginia, and Iowa. In other states, insurers requested dramatic increases in the cost of premiums because of the political uncertainty surrounding the law.
Comments
Regarding Anthem: Bye Felicia
We really should punish these companies for taking preemptive action to escape the regulatory regime.
And what does Anthem think they are going to do by pulling their business out of all the states?
It's a bit like this:
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_JOGmXpe5I]
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
Generally, they aren't leaving the states.
They are declining to write ACA policies in the states. That still leaves policies through employers and other policies they can write.
In any case, I think a lot of this is a way of pressuring the gov't for higher rates paid by taxpayers. That was always the silver lining in Obamacare for insurers.
Just a slice of reality...
HeritageCare/RomneyCare/ACA/ObamaCare/Dems "Crowning" Achievement
My dear friend fell ill last November and 3 ½ weeks ago he passed away. Last night me and my husband spent the evening with his widow comforting her in her time of such devastating loss. Along with everything else, she may now have to declare bankruptcy because of the sky-high deductibles and co-pays (double whammy deductible for both calendar 2016 & calendar 2017). She & he both work for the city and both are/were "covered" under the ACA.
I feel so helpless, so disempowered (to say nothing of the way she feels).
And the neoliberal dems are still crowing about their achievement.
Fuck the greedy, corrupt neoliberal dems, fuck their "funders", fuck the dolts & chuckleheads propping them up in the media and the McResistance. Fuck 'em all.
Compensated Spokes Model for Big Poor.
There is a major flaw in the UMASS study in the MJ article
It does not calculate the administrative savings to the providers. Doctor's offices have enormous cost (I've heard as much as 50% of a given bill) from bookkeeping to collections to legal fees, all or most of which would disappear. Of course that would be a "job killer" - collection agents, lawyers, insurance agents, there would be thousands of people with negative value jobs who would be thrown out onto the streets.
Supposedly CA spends $367 (?) billion in health care, but a single payer system would cost $400 billion? There are 37 single payer systems in the world, the most expensive of which (Norway's) costs only 70% as much as America's private insurance non system, but CA's single payer proposal would cost more?
Back as far as 2009 I was saying that Obamacare would be a price gouger's paradise, as hospitals and people as diverse as medical office landlords would take advantage of the lack of price controls. It appears to me that the UMASS study assumes that this has happened and cannot be reversed (unless someone can come up with another explanation - as a possible my MediCal clinic has seen a huge increase in specialist appointments as the MediCal expansion has generated a huge increase in the number of people being diagnosed with things like hypertension and diabetes - or in my case parkinson's)
On to Biden since 1973