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Another Obamacare co-op fails

Finding out what’s in it: The third Obamacare co-op in the past two weeks has failed. .

Illinois regulators took steps Tuesday to shut down Land of Lincoln Health, a 3-year-old startup that lost $90 million in 2015 and more than $17 million through May 31. Illinois Department of Insurance officials announced they are seeking a court order allowing the state to take over Land of Lincoln Health and prepare the company for liquidation. The department’s acting director, Anne Melissa Dowling, will work with the federal government to establish a 60-day special enrollment period for Land of Lincoln policyholders to find and purchase new health coverage.

This leaves the count at 16 failures out of 23 Obamacare co-ops. And there will be more. The economics of the co-ops never made sense, dependent as they were on gigantic and unaffordable subsidizes from the government. In fact, none of the economics of any of Obamacare make sense, which is why the whole monstrous law has raised costs for everyone and made being a doctor a far worse bureaucratic nightmare than it was before the law was passed.

It is a good thing the American people have woken up and decided to nominate candidates for President who are avowed conservatives with proven track records for limiting the power of government. Oh wait…

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

3 comments

  • Localfluff

    The standing headline. And it could stand for decades if nothing is done about it, believe me! Since I’m not American I don’t know anything about your specific health care system. Having grown up with my version of socialist health care, I just involve myself with the local byzantine bureaucracy when I’m sick or injured (which is hard to do in that condition, but since it always changes it’s pointless to look into it earlier).

    Trump says he will “repeal and replace” Obamacare with “something wonderful”. He doesn’t specify anything. And I haven’t heard any media asking him about it. It must be a wholeheartedly hated system for him to get away with that phrase about it. Like: Please, just anything else, blank cheque.

  • wayne

    LocalFluff:

    You may not be an American, but you have a unique way with English & I find it brings a smile to my face on occasion! Don’t always agree with you, but I can not deny, you have an trademarked way of presenting.

    Thumbnail sketch of healthcare–

    Historically, we’ve had a free-market medical system, supplemented heavily by private charity (including the Church, all variants) that built & ran Hospitals for the benefit of the poor.
    (it used to be a virtuous thing for wealthy folks to donate large sums to help the poor. It was considered a moral & ethical obligation, but not forced by decree of law, to give back to the community by donating money for Hospitals, Symphony halls, Library’s, etc. Indeed one of our most hated (by the lefties) “robber barons,” built hundreds of free library’s throughout the Country in small towns.)

    Starting in the Progressive Era & into the FDR “New Deal,” the government increasingly stuck it’s nose into things and started taking more & more control of what had largely been the province of non-governmental institutions and the Church. Depression Era was also when our “Social Security” system was created.

    In WW-2 wages were heavily controlled & larger firms competed for Labor by offering non-money benefits, and that’s how health-insurance got tied into employment for a large segment of workers. Unionized folks at first, but it expanded greatly after the War.

    After WW2, technological innovation, and pharmaceutical invention, rapidly expanded medical care to more & more people.

    “Socialized Medicine” was fought vigorously every time the left tried to IMPOSE it on us, and the various Medical/Doctor societies,professional trade-groups, etc., understood that very clearly.

    In the 1960’s, LBJ created Medicare, which was socialized-medicine for retired people. You could collect social-security & get government paid-for health-insurance. Except for the Veterans Administration, the vast majority of healthcare was run by private or non-profit operation’s & very few providers were actual government employees.
    As well, the Beast got even more greedy and expanded all sorts of “social-welfare” programs.

    Concurrently, non-profit hospitals & organizations started to play a smaller and smaller role, and were crowded out by government money & services. This created a perverse situation where they had to start “partnering” with the government more and more, or go out of business.

    (While we collectively are an incredibly generous Nation & donate billions to Charity, people were systematically trained that the government would “pay for everything,” and the cultural heritage of “helping your neighbor” started to erode more & more.)

    Meanwhile, the government used the Money-Carrot as a stick, to compel and force Providers to do what the government wanted done.

    The decline of unions & the rise of entrepreneurial people creating small business’s, (especially during Reagan) helped foster a healthy market for private health-insurance but the government continued to clamp down and expand control.

    Now, today, we have essentially socialized Medicine with Obama, and his goal is to collectivize and nationalize private insurance companies, by bankrupting them, which will force Providers to become government employee’s and bureaucrat’s.

    What Obama wants, is British socialized medicine, on amphetamines, where everyone in medicine is paid by and works for, the government (slaves) and everyone is beholding to the government for their “free” health-insurance, which is never free, and not real insurance.

    The government dictates what care you get, and when, and also dictates how much they will pay for it.
    That is driving Doctors to leave medicine, and bankrupting Hospitals, clinics, and insurance company’s.

    Yeah– Trump is going to “create something wonderful,” as-if a President creates anything. He loves “government medicine” for the peasants, he himself can pay for anything he wants.

    Much like Hillary has never pumped her own gas, or driven her own car, or done her own laundry, or cooker her own food…. Trump doesn’t either.

    –Look at these people’s hands– they never actually WORKED a day in their lives. Trump steals by using the tax system & doing real-estate “deals.” (“big, big deals!”)
    Hillary steals by auctioning off special favors to her crony-pals and left-wing nuts.( and attending the wedding’s of Trump, for which she was well paid.)

    In any other Country on earth, the peasant’s would storm the Castle, and drag these swine into the street, and kill them ALL. (up against the Wall!)

    BUT, that’s not how we do things over here, but the Mastermind’s have figured out how to enlist 1/2 the population to steal from the other 1/2 that actually works, and systematically undermined our Constitution over the course of 100+ year’s, to the point where lots-o-people think it’s OK and even legal to do so.

    Obama was born in Hawaii, but he didn’t grow up in America. His Marxist dad abandoned him, his hippy Marxist mother abandoned him, and his mentor was Frank Marshal Davis, a well known enemy (to the FBI) of America, and a Marxist. He smoked dope & snorted cocaine in high-school and somehow got into 2 really elite schools where he further honed his Marxist Ways, but we have no idea what his grades were or who paid for him to attend.

    He has no clue what real American History, Cultural, Ethics, and Morals we have in this Country. His ideology is completely foreign, but useful idiots, fellow travelers, and America haters have all banded together, along with Crony capitalists, to collude against the ordinary man, woman, and child.

    Hope that help!

  • Edward

    “Trump says he will ‘repeal and replace’ Obamacare with ‘something wonderful’. ”

    Trump has been rather specific that he thinks the Canadian and British healthcare systems work well but has not commented favorably on other systems. The conclusion, of course, is that socialized, single-payer, government-issue medicine is what he thinks is wonderful.

    Unfortunately, Canadians and Brits seem not to agree. In Canada, even the government knows that their system is so bad that they do not pursue the many illegal private clinics across the country.

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