Health Insurers and Their Demands
Here is the headline from the NY Times:
Health Insurers List Demands if Affordable Care Act Is Killed
Is anyone else stunned or as disgusted as I am? The utter arrogance of these predators to make demands after they continue to gouge us over and over. I hated the ACA but a big reason for that was the collusion between the government and the insurers. They say they have “lost” money with this law but they have increased their rates so much that there is NO way they are losing money overall. In fact, I have posted their profits here before.
So what are their demands?
- They need a clear commitment from the Trump administration and congressional leaders that the government will continue offsetting some costs for low-income people.
- They also want to keep in place rules that encourage young and healthy people to sign up, which the insurers say are crucial to a stable market for individual buyers.
To summarize, they want subsidies and they want to gouge young people who don’t get sick.
In what other business does the seller make demands? Does your business extort your customers? I will say it again, they need to be dismantled. We need real competition for bare bones catastrophic plans. We cannot give in to these bastards.
The coming changes will be, as usual, viewed from the Top of the Mountain – HHS, Corporate Headquarters and Top-Level Entities, Boardrooms with $500 calfskin leather seats around the mahogany table. They are the only voices that will matter in the Trump Administration. Before, under Obama, it was the boyars of the Cult of Medicine – the Stanford/Harvard/Yale/Hopkins set with their $1000 patent-leather shoes unstained by patient care. It is simply a different gathering of the elite who will gather about the table, and murmur about the problem. Increase insurer competition, Tom? Great Idea – let’s title the next bill, whatever it is, with the addendum, “And Increasing Insurer Competition.” Make it look to the red rubes that we are competing!
….Antibiotic Stewardship, Pain Medication Guidelines Screening & Reporting mandates? Go AWAY? Where do you think they will GO? That’s like telling Stalin to lighten up a bit on the Great Terror. The Great Terror increases the control over the people. What could be wrong with that? Do you want to risk a revolution by making physicians autonomous? What sort of Socialist Bernie subversive are you, anyway?
Don’t bother tweaking it to fix it…..Kill it now. Gut it like a fish. It is now or never. Either that or get used to Antibiotic Stewardship, Pain Medication Guidelines * Screening & Reporting mandates for the rest of your lives. We need to dodge this bullet.
Increase insurer competition across state lines…. NOW!