<p>The VA isn’t a sole provider to many veterans? Substitute whatever end-user you want and you’ll end up with the same degree of empathy, same great service, and same total disconnect from political expedience. Can’t wait.</p>
<p>I’d say Medicare is more of an entitlement, not that it really matters.</p>
<p>“Of course, California hasn’t fought ACA hammer and tong the way Florida has.”</p>
<p>Yeah, the system is working great in Ca.</p>
<p>CF, go back and read the LA Times article. These additional govt funds going to the insurers are unrelated to the risk corridors program. No, they are planning to take these funds from other healthcare programs (didn’t say which ones) and divert it to the insurance companies. This was not in the law. They are doing this in consultation with the insurance companies to entice them to keep premiums rate increases to a minimum. The whole enterprise sounds illegal to me.</p>
<p>A few weeks before the VA scandal broke, I saw multiple ads on TV from the VA asking doctors to consider working there. I thought at the time how odd that was. None of the news stories have said why the wait times for appointments are so long at the VA that they covered it up. But given those ads, I’d say they lack doctors and apparently had to resort to TV to try and recruit. More patients and few doctors equal long waits.</p>
<p>“The VA is health care . Medicare is health insurance”</p>
<p>Difference without a distinction. If there was only Medicare for the entire population, the govt would have monopolistic control of pricing healthcare, thereby turning private entities into utility-like companies. Without competition, there is little difference between a for-profit company and a govt department. </p>
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The ‘funding’… lol… mechanism has been revised. What kind of additional reason do you need, Fang?</p>
<p>Where did I ever claim insurers would be made whole?</p>
<p>I did go back and read the LA Times article. As I said, they are talking about adding money to the risk corridors program:</p>
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<p>Here’s what this means: if there isn’t enough money in the risk corridors, because too many companies lost too much money and not enough companies made tons of money, then the HHS will supplement the risk corridors money with some money they will divert (ie steal) from other programs. The only companies that would be eligible to get that money, the risk corridor money, are companies that lost money. And they only get paid a percentage of their losses, not all of their losses.</p>
<p>In other words, being paid by the risk corridors program is something that any insurance company is deeply interested in avoiding.</p>
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<p>I need you to explain to me why any company would voluntarily lose money on purpose, in order that some of it but not all of it would be paid back. </p>
<p>You can characterize this anyway you want, but I call it a huge slush fund (wonder where they are getting this extortion money) to bribe the insurance companies to keep premiums low in advance of the Nov elections. </p>
<p>How is this bribe supposed to work? “Here’s a great bribe: you lose money and we’ll pay some of it back” is not a winning offer. Because Fang’s Razor: insurers are not idiots.</p>
<p>Lacking a quote of me claiming insurers would be made whole, I’ll assume you’ll eventually tire of explaining that they won’t, Fang. </p>
<p>The mix, Fang, back when there was the synchronized chanting here about premiums being priced just right this year because insurers are so smart. Too smart to believe they’d get the 40% young invincibles the ACA was designed around. The mix that no one yet really seems to know because of that back-end that still, as a monument to governmental efficiency, hasn’t been built yet. </p>
<p>But the insurers have a much better idea than the administration is willing to admit and they jockeyed through the additional funding guarantee. Not a change that would have happened, if the powers that be didn’t want to keep a lid on premium rise.</p>
<p>That you might have trouble seeing this really isn’t a problem, since it’s my educated guess, not yours. </p>
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In the anticipation of future profits.</p>
<p>Not that difficult a concept.</p>
<p>So then your idea is that company A is going to set lower premiums for 2015 in hopes of luring in buyers, then jack up prices in 2016? That’s a possible strategy. But of course, buyers are free to waltz off to company B in 2016 when they see company A’s price hikes.</p>
<p>GP, Medicare already has a monopoly on 65+. I I don’t know if you have elderly relatives but if you do, ask them whether they’d like to trade in their Medicare for the glories of free market competition. </p>
<p>BTW, Medicare spends something like 97% of every premium dollar on claims. The private for-profit insurers had to be bribed into getting up to 80%. </p>
<p>Medicare has been reimbursing hospitals and doctors far less than their costs. The only way the system actually worked is to cost shift the losses to private insurance companies. In the system you want, private insurance companies will cease to exist. If govt bureaucrats price the service too low, there will inevitably be less supply for greater demand. Have you ever taken an economics course?</p>
<p><a href=“http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/mayo-clinic-makes-medicare-medicaid-cuts”>http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/mayo-clinic-makes-medicare-medicaid-cuts</a></p>
<p>“But of course, buyers are free to waltz off to company B in 2016 when they see company A’s price hikes.”</p>
<p>The difference in premiums for the two insurance companies available to me under Obamacare is only a few dollars. There is no competition in the present system, regardless of what you are being told.</p>
<p>Did your econ course tell you about markets without perfect information, GP? Did they explain how markets without perfect information can often fail badly?</p>
<p>Did they mention monopoly pricing? Such as the pricing model that would be in effect if one provider, let’s say Sutter, owned all the hospitals?</p>
<p>“Such as the pricing model that would be in effect if one provider, let’s say Sutter, owned all the hospitals?”</p>
<p>This is much more likely to happen under Obamacare than a consumer-oriented healthcare system.</p>
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A good summation of the facts of life, pooch.</p>
<p>You can substitute ‘the taxpayer’, of which there are vanishingly few, for ‘private insurance company’, if you wish.</p>
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<p>Why would you say that? Big hospital chains have been gobbling up hospitals for a while now, especially in California, and it has nothing to do with the ACA. I’m not sure what you mean by “consumer-oriented healthcare system,” but even in a perfectly competitive market, a monopoly is dandy (for the monopolist) and any company would love to have one. With a monopoly, competitive price pressures are a thing of the past, and the monopolist can set their own price to maximize revenue.</p>
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No, that a highly regulated industry, abetted by the government that’s distorting the market (AKA the ACA) can predatory price as a group if they choose to in hopes of an expanded market. Why wouldn’t they – they’ve gained indemnity from any losses that amount to anything of consequence? </p>
<p>Seems enough, without even considering the guaranteed cash flow of subsidized premiums. </p>