Affordable Care Act (AKA Obamacare)

[pioneer98]

I'm rich as hell and I buy body parts off dead kids.

Children's body parts are out. The new thing is children's blood. This is according to the same people that tell us we have nothing to fear with the coming AI singularity.

Peter Thiel Is Very, Very Interested in Young People's Blood

More than anything, Peter Thiel, the billionaire technology investor and Donald Trump supporter, wants to find a way to escape death. He's channeled millions of dollars into startups working on anti-aging medicine, spends considerable time and money researching therapies for his personal use, and believes society ought to open its mind to life-extension methods that sound weird or unsavory.

Speaking of weird and unsavory, if there's one thing that really excites Thiel, it's the prospect of having younger people's blood transfused into his own veins.

That practice is known as parabiosis, and, according to Thiel, it's a potential biological Fountain of Youth--the closest thing science has discovered to an anti-aging panacea.

[pioneer98]

Re: market socialism, this is a good article:

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2012/12/the- ... the-black/

I read most of this last night. It was a fascinating read, but had to re-read a few tough parts. The part about how the difference between prices for things were barely any different in centrally planned East Germany vs capitalist West Germany was mind blowing. This made me see certain events in a different light (i.e. the 2007-08 financial crisis bailouts and the rise of Silicon Valley as a force rivaling Wall Street). I'm still struggling to understand how these public capital firms described in the article would operate. The idea was public entities would buy up whatever stocks and bonds you own, and pay you for them. The management structure of all the companies would still be left in place, they'd just have new public stockholders that ultimately answer to voters. I guess it was not real deep on particulars on how these public entities would operate, which is really what would determine whether that system succeeds or fails.

[stlouie_lipp]

Just read in the paper that in my county only two insurers will be offering plans and costs are expected to rise 59% for 2017.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

Just read in the paper that in my county only two insurers will be offering plans and costs are expected to rise 59% for 2017.

We are right back where we started aren't we?

If Trump offered Single Payer, I'd probably vote for him.

[Cheddar Tom]

It is behind a paywall at the WSJ....but BCBS of N. Carolina said there are not enough healthy people signing up to balance out the risk pool.

[33anda3rd]

It is behind a paywall at the WSJ....but BCBS of N. Carolina said there are not enough healthy people signing up to balance out the risk pool.

Because healthy people already had insurance pre-Obamacare.

The balance is aggressively taxing the rich and big corporations.

[pioneer98]

A lot going on here:
Wellmark plans 38% to 43% increases for some customers

Tens of thousands of Iowans who buy their own health insurance are about to receive a shock in the mail.

Wellmark Blue Cross & Blue Shield is sending letters this week telling about 30,000 customers it plans to raise their premiums by 38 percent to 43 percent next year.

Wellmark sells about three-quarters of individual policies in Iowa’s health-insurance market. The steep increases will affect people who bought relatively new plans that comply with rules of the Affordable Care Act.

Another 90,000 Wellmark customers who hold older individual insurance plans are expected to face smaller increases, which will be announced in June. The increases being proposed this week also don’t affect the hundreds of thousands of Wellmark customers who obtain coverage via their employers. Their premiums are expected to rise less, because they are in larger, more stable pools of customers.

Wellmark Executive Vice President Laura Jackson said poor health and rising medical costs forced the company to seek state permission to raise premiums so aggressively on the plans in question. She said the company spent $1.27 on health care last year for every dollar in premiums it took in for those customers. The company says it lost $99 million on those customers in the past two years.

She said about 10 percentage points of the increase stem from the costs of a single, extremely complicated patient who is receiving $1 million per month worth of care for a severe genetic disorder.

First, these rate hikes have to be approved by a state regulator. That's something you never hear mentioned. We blame "Obamacare" for the skyrocketing rates. Well, it's the state that actually approves the increases. The state could do something about it, if they wanted to.

Second, what is the free market solution to a patient that costs over $1 million per month to care for? That's a lot of charity, and it's responsible for a quarter of the increase in just one year.

[lukethedrifter]

Second, what is the free market solution to a patient that costs over $1 million per month to care for? That's a lot of charity, and it's responsible for a quarter of the increase in just one year.

This is a really good question.

[heyzeus]

Just read in the paper that in my county only two insurers will be offering plans and costs are expected to rise 59% for 2017.

Yep, our insurer just announced they're leaving Texas too. I have to buy my own insurance (technically I'm a self-employed co-owner of a business), so time to prepare to take it up the tailpipe on premium and deductible hikes next year - if anyone is even willing to sell me and my family a policy.

The ACA is a tremendous failure for anyone not on an employee provided plan or does not qualify for a federal subsidy. I feel like it was pretty foreseeable that the solution of requiring everyone to buy private insurance, and requiring ruthless insurance companies to provide policies to everyone without excluding anything, would result in insurance companies gouging everyone they can.

I happen to be in one of the categories of people they can gouge. I may have to leave a job I love in order to make more money just so that I can pay for insurance, or go to work for a company that provides health insurance benefits.

[pioneer98]

I happen to be in one of the categories of people they can gouge. I may have to leave a job I love in order to make more money just so that I can pay for insurance, or go to work for a company that provides health insurance benefits.

On the flip side, there are people who can't leave a job to try to start their own business purely because of the hit they'd take in having to buy their own health care.