Obama's hometown paper says Obamacare is a failure. They are right.

[Русский агент]

Obama's hometown paper says Obamacare is a failure:


Consumers face staggering price hikes for individual insurance policies. Some types of plans cost an average of 43 percent to 55 percent more. Ditto across the country: states approved rates with cardiac-arrest-inducing premium increases.

Many consumers will find fewer choices because major carriers fled the market. UnitedHealthcare bolted.

So did Aetna. Land of Lincoln Health collapsed mid-year, leaving policy holders to scramble for coverage that could cost them plenty. In many places across the nation, people find drastically fewer choices than they did last year.

The insurers fled because they didn't want to lose more money on a government-run market that is out of whack — a market they think likely will never be profitable for them. That isn't surprising.

Let's look at the failings:

Obamacare failed because it flunked Economics 101 and Human Nature 101.

It straitjacketed insurers into providing overly expensive, soup-to-nuts policies.

It wasn't flexible enough so that people could buy as much coverage as they wanted and could afford — not what the government dictated.

Many healthy people primarily want catastrophic coverage. Obamacare couldn't lure them in, couldn't persuade them to buy on the chance they'd get sick.



http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-obamacare-fail-health-care-insurance-medicine-0911-jm-20160909-story.html

 

[Русский агент]

Obamacare failed because insurance is based on risk pools — that is, the lucky subsidize the unlucky.

The unlucky who have big health problems (and big medical bills) reap much greater benefits than those who remain healthy and out of the doctors' office.

Obamacare's rules hamstring insurers.

They can't exclude people for pre-existing conditions, and can't charge older customers more than three times as much as the young. Those rules skew the market in ways Obamacare didn't figure out how to offset.

Result: Young and healthy consumers pay far more in premiums than their claims would justify in order to subsidize the unexpectedly large influx of older, sicker customers who require expensive care.

Too many unlucky people, too few lucky people: That will collapse any insurance scheme.

 

[Русский агент]

Obamacare failed because it allowed Americans to sign up after they got sick and needed help paying all those medical bills.

Insurance is usually structured so that, although you don't know if you'll need it, you pay for it anyway, just in case; your alternative is financial doom.

Obamacare lets you game the system and, for example, buy auto coverage after you crash, so you have no incentive to buy insurance beforehand.

 

[Русский агент]

Obamacare failed because it hasn't tamed U.S. medical costs. Health care is about supply and demand: People who get coverage use it, especially if the law mandates free preventive care.

Iron law of economics: Nothing is free; someone pays. To pretend otherwise was folly.

Those forces combined to spike the costs of care, and thus insurance costs.

 

[Русский агент]

Obamacare failed because too many carriers simply can't cover expenses, let alone turn a profit, in this rigidly controlled system.

Take Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois, the state's dominant Obamacare insurer. Last year, for every dollar the carrier collected, it spent $1.32 buying care and providing services for customers, according to BCBS President Maurice Smith.

No wonder BCBS is proposing rate increases from 23 percent to 45 percent for its individual plans.