Chris Navin

Megan McArdle at Bloomberg: ‘Obamacare Insurers Are Suffering. That Won’t End Well.‘

As to the recent noise made by UnitedHealth:

‘That said, strategic positioning is obviously far from the whole story, or even the majority of it. UnitedHealth really is losing money on these policies right now. It really is seeing something that looks dangerously like adverse selection.’

I still think it’s crucial to advocate that the ACA, poorly written and hastily passed with one-party consent, is a law designed to plan over 1/6 of the American economy from one location, taking money earned by some and redistributing that money (time + labor) to others by way of a huge bureaucracy, politicians, and other interested parties.

The things you might dislike about health-care access now, in all probability, will increase: Huge networks, murky billing and rising prices. Some people will have access to care they previously didn’t but with awful cost/benefit outcomes.

We’ve taken many of the failures of the old system, the employer-based, jerry-rigged one, and vastly expanded Medicaid on top of it. This has also taken much choice, incentive, and opportunity away from the hardest working people, while trying to give the hardest working people’s stuff to the people who have less stuff.

This blog believes there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

The promises made reeked at the time (bending the cost-curve downwards), and a lot of numbers were tossed around to sway public opinion, and get the thing passed.

Such promises cannot possibly be met, and when they’re not, it’s reasonable to expect the people who made the promises will be all too happy to then regulate, ration, and control the system they’ve built, and huge parts of the economy, the political economy, and our lives.

They have the knowledge to do so, as far as they’re concerned.

Jim Pethokoukis quotes Robert Laszewski:

‘When are Obamacare apologists going to stop spinning the insurance exchange enrollment as some big victory that is running smoothly? Yes, Obamacare has brought the number of those uninsured down — because of the Medicaid expansion in those states that have taken it and because the poorest people eligible for the biggest exchange subsidies and lowest deductibles have found the program attractive. But that Obamacare has been a huge failure among the working class and middle-class — not to mention those who make too much for subsidies and have to pay the full cost for their expensive plans–has once again been confirmed.’

Previously: Charlie Martin here:

‘Whatever solution we look for though, the really important point is this: the whole basis of Obamacare, the notion that we can have more people, getting more benefits, and pay less, is just impossible. The arithmetic doesn’t work. And if you think that’s “unfair,” I’m sorry.’

Everyone equally more miserable, really: