Every day we’re finding out about more loopholes, gimmicks and bailouts built into Obamacare in favor of the insurance companies, and of course at the expense of the taxpayer.
Not only will the insured have to carry the burden of double and triple premiums, higher deductibles and potential loss of catastrophic coverage, the American taxpayer is finding out that they are assuming all the risk of the insurance companies.
Here’s the simplest way to describe risk assumption: If the insurance company runs up costs…no problem. They will only have to pay a maximum of $45,000 and the taxpayer picks up the rest.
In other words, insurance purchased through Obamacare’s government-run exchanges isn’t even full-fledged private insurance; rather, it’s a sort of private-public hybrid. Private insurance companies pay for costs below $45,000, then taxpayers generously pick up the tab—a tab that their president hasn’t ever bothered to tell them he has opened up on their behalf—for four-fifths of the next $200,000-plus worth of costs. In this way, and so many others, Obamacare takes a major step toward the government monopoly over American medicine (“single payer”) that liberals drool about in their sleep.
If THAT doesn’t make you upset, guess what else is built into Obamacare? The Insurance companies are guaranteed not to lose money
….insurance companies won’t bear the cost of their own losses—at least not more than about a quarter of them. The other three-quarters will be borne by American taxpayers.
For some reason, President Obama hasn’t talked about this particular feature of his signature legislation. Indeed, it’s bad enough that Obamacare is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to funnel $1,071,000,000,000.00 (that’s $1.071 trillion) over the next decade (2014 to 2023) from American taxpayers,through Washington, to health insurance companies. It’s even worse that Obamacare is trying to coerce Americans into buying those same insurers’ product (although there are escape routes). It’s almost unbelievable that it will also subsidize those same insurers’ losses.
So here’s the spin. In order for Obamacare to work all the way around, subscribers/enrollees were critical. Since Obamacare was essentially setup as a failure from the start, enrollment is abysmal, and therefore the entire system has collapsed before it even got off the gorund.
If you are an insurance company, you were smart to have your attorneys write a guarantee into the legislation which essentially guarantees you will get paid —even if the customers are not paying in.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is what happens when you have an idiot who specializes in NCAA Final Four brackets take charge of a rocket ship. Obama had no clue how to run a profitable business, and he farmed out the most important element of the Obamacare legislation to the insurance company’s attorneys —- the entire text of the bill.
America has essentially done the equivalent of putting an inexperienced, broke, crack-addicted, homeless African American who has never known his baby daddy in the cockpit of the rocket ship. The rocket has launched and this ebonics spewing homey is flickin switches —- lookin for the hydraulics to make the rocket ship bounce to his JayZee music.
If we weren’t racist before Obamacare, we should now seriously consider blaming an entire culture who obviously had no clue how to raise one of their own properly.
This po’ black child don’t know sh$% from shinola – The Jerk, Steve Martin
Bailing Out Health Insurers and Helping Obamacare
Excerpt of the article:
But that’s exactly what it will do—unless Republicans take action. As Laszewski explains, Obamacare contains a “Reinsurance Program that caps big claim costs for insurers (individual plans only).” He writes that “in 2014, 80% of individual costs between $45,000 and $250,000 are paid by the government [read: by taxpayers], for example.”
In other words, insurance purchased through Obamacare’s government-run exchanges isn’t even full-fledged private insurance; rather, it’s a sort of private-public hybrid. Private insurance companies pay for costs below $45,000, then taxpayers generously pick up the tab—a tab that their president hasn’t ever bothered to tell them he has opened up on their behalf—for four-fifths of the next $200,000-plus worth of costs. In this way, and so many others, Obamacare takes a major step toward the government monopoly over American medicine (“single payer”) that liberals drool about in their sleep.
Laszewski adds, “The reinsurance program has done and will continue to do what it was intended to do; help attract and keep more carriers in Obamacare than might have otherwise come.” Thus, Obamacare is being aided by having taxpayers subsidize big insurance companies’ business expenses. (Who could ever have guessed that big government and big business might be natural allies?)
But, amazingly, it doesn’t stop there. Laszewski writes that Obamacare also contains a “Risk Corridor Program that limits overall losses for insurers.” So insurers not only don’t have to pay out all of their costs; they also don’t have to swallow all of their losses.
Laszewski explains that if an insurance company expects its costs in a given year to be X, and those costs end up being more than X plus 2 percent, taxpayers will come to that insurance company’s rescue—thanks to Obamacare. In fact, once an insurance company covers that initial 2 percent in unexpected costs, taxpayers will cover at least 80 percent of any additional costs the insurer accrues.
Laszewski provides a couple of examples to help illustrate taxpayers’ unwitting generosity toward these “participating health plans” (plans sold through Obamacare’s government-run exchanges):
“[I]f the health plan has costs at 110% of the medical cost target [the costs that the insurer expects to accrue], it will be responsible for only 102.4% of the target (a 2.4% shortfall)—only about a quarter of its losses.
“If the health plan’s medical costs come in at 120% of the expected claim cost target level, the health plan will only be responsible for 104.4% of the target (a 4.4% shortfall)—again only about a quarter of its losses.”
It’s actually only about a fifth in this example, as taxpayers would cover 78 percent of the losses, with the insurer covering just 22 percent.
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Ageing population is a blessing not a burden
(Before It's News)
By Alexander De Croo
Of course, this bears some truth. As more people live longer, we can expect there to be additional costs for society. Increased medical expenses and demands for health provisions put extra pressure on already strained services. Longer life expectancies challenge current pension systems. And as the old-age dependency ratio – the ratio of elderly people to the working age population – goes off balance, welfare models will be pushed to the limit.
These challenges need to be addressed. But I believe the best way of doing this is to tackle the issue from another angle. We need a new and positive narrative that defies the negativity and transforms our ageing populations from a problem into an asset.
At the recent Summit on the Global Agenda, ageing populations were positively defined as “our only growing natural resource”. What an interesting and refreshing take on the issue. From this perspective, the question then becomes: how do we exploit this resource sustainably while avoiding the mistakes we have made with other natural resources?
We all know that demographics drive demand. It therefore makes economic sense for businesses to focus on the over-60s and to embark on “baby boomer marketing”. We have already seen some examples of this – holiday resorts for older people, technology courses for the over-60s. Companies stand to gain a lot from exploiting this growing and powerful group of consumers.
But does this consumer approach fulfil the hidden potential of ageing populations? No. For me, the answer lies in participation. The over-60s have to be seen less as receivers – of welfare, of help – or targeted consumers, and more as participants, both in our economy and our society.
Let’s take the example of the labour market. It is only by taking older employees seriously – not by pampering or stigmatizing them – that we can make the most of everything they have to offer. This means that we have to invest in them. By doing so, we send out a powerful signal that we value them, their experience and their years of knowledge.
Increased autonomy is also important. Companies can’t offer every employee a vertical rise through the ranks, and some employees’ careers will level off. Without the prospects of further advancement, how do you keep these people satisfied throughout what might now be a longer working life? By providing them with an increased level of autonomy. We could even get rid of individual job descriptions and separate responsibilities, which can often lead to tasks becoming repetitive and mundane. Instead, let’s formulate objectives on a team level – and leave the members of the team themselves to decide how they achieve them.
Can governments do something to help promote this shift in attitude towards older workers? Yes, and to do so, they must use both the carrot and the stick. Tougher rules and laws will help, but only hand in hand with policies that reward those businesses that embrace this participatory attitude. To successfully change attitudes, governments must take a step-by-step approach. Big bangs make noise and end in bits and pieces. Taking small steps, involving people along the way and addressing their fears will strengthen the social platform and lead to long-term and sustainable success.
This shift towards a participatory approach will eventually redefine the concept of sustainable business. Today, sustainability largely involves addressing environmental challenges and the loss of natural resources. In the years to come, our understanding of sustainability will be enriched by embracing our most precious and the only growing natural resource: our older population.