Aetna CEO: Obamacare in 'Death Spiral'
Aetna
Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Bertolini escalated his criticism of
the Affordable Care Act, saying Obamacare’s markets are nearing failure
as premiums climb and healthier individuals drop out.
We have heard about death spiral for a long time not only for ACA but also for Medicare.
ACA
and Medicare have to be tweeted to save them. GOP would not do it
under Obama now they have to. Tweet the plan not total repeal is the
answer.
I'm glad Aetna is leaving the ACA market. One step closer to single payer system without the middle man.
This article is so stunningly superficial.
“It
is in a death spiral,” Bertolini said in a video interview with the
Wall Street Journal that aired Wednesday on the newspaper’s website. He
predicted
that more insurers will drop out of the market for 2018,
following Humana Inc.’s decision to quit Obamacare entirely for next year.
If
this happens or better yet before it happens ACA should allow anyone to
buy Medicare as their primary medical insurance. This allows people to
buy insurance across state borders.
Aetna,
too, is mulling whether to further reduce its presence in the markets
set up by the ACA. The company cut its footprint to four states for this
year, from 15, after losing about $450 million on sales of ACA plans
last year.
Bertolini has been saying for
months that the ACA’s markets are deteriorating. In October, he said
that rising rates would push healthy people away from Obamacare, leaving
insurers with sicker customers, and forcing premiums even higher.
This is the real question: Did ACA keep premiums from raising even more?
The
increasing burden of medical costs as fewer and fewer healthy customers
enroll are among the conditions that create an insurance death spiral.
To my knowledge there is no data this is true. The penalty for not buying insurance is much higher now.
Some
health-care experts have disputed the idea that Obamacare is
experiencing a death spiral. Matthew Fiedler, a fellow with the Center
for Health Policy at the Brookings Institution, says the small decline
in Obamacare enrollment in 2017 compared to 2016 was probably not driven
by climbing premiums. Most individuals get subsidies, helping cushion
the effect of rising costs.
I listened to Rand Paul's talk about the bill he put follow to replace Obamacare.
He wants to put high risk people in a risk pool.
Apparently he will not give these people any subsidies. He said his plan does not cost the gov't?
Where
is the data showing how well risk pools worked before and if it was
working why did we need the ACA to make a law covering them?
“Marketplace
premium increases had little if any impact on marketplace sign-ups,
providing strong evidence against claims that these increases would send
the individual market into a death spiral,” he wrote in an analysis published Feb. 8 on the Brookings website.
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