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Another Obamacare co-op shuts down

Finding out what’s in it: With Maryland’s Obamacare co-op closing on December 8, 20 of the original 24 Obamacare co-ops have gone out of business.

With the near-collapse of Maryland’s co-op — called Evergreen Health — at least 989,000 individuals nationwide have lost their health insurance coverage when the nonprofit co-ops stopped selling insurance to customers, according to TheDCNF’s tally. The losses cost taxpayers at least $2.2 billion in upfront federal loans awarded by the Obama administration to 24 nonprofit co-ops under Obamacare. The co-ops were intended to help keep health care costs down by providing non-profit competition with commercial for-profit insurers. The losses do not include statewide costs where the state or local governments were forced to cover doctor and hospital bills that the failed co-ops could not pay from remaining revenues.

In many cases, those losses were substantial. In New York alone, state taxpayers face at least $200 million in costs owed to medical providers that the bankrupt Health Republic co-op could not cover, according to the Albany Business Review.

The remaining four are all barely surviving, and will likely fail themselves in the next few years, even if the Republican leadership goes chicken and delays the repeal of Obamacare while they haggle over what to do to replace it. What they should do is repeal it outright, and let that very weird and forgotten concept of freedom operate freely. I’ve heard it has worked very well in the past, though unfortunately most elected officials today are ignorant of that history.

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

6 comments

  • Chris R

    In New Jersey, my health plan went up 18% and my dental plan was eliminated.

    No way these companies are making money on the plans that are still available.

  • Cotour

    Related because its all crazy as per design and agenda:

    I don’t know who might remember I wrote a while ago about a customer who is a teacher who told me that she was ordered to call all children by the gender neutral term of “ZE”. I found this story from England who is right on board, read it and weep.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4021894/Oxford-University-says-students-use-gender-neutral-ze-place-he.html

    Things like this that are designed to destroy individual as well as sexual identity and create confusion along with the forced Islamic invasion of the West lies at the foundation of the “New World Order” (you know, the new world order that used to be a conspiracy theory and anyone who spoke of it was and still is thought of as “crazy”. Not so crazy now, is it?)

    Total and specific perversion with a designed purpose and agenda driven exclusively by the Left and Leftists. How much will a Trump administration be able to turn us away from such abominations? We wait.

    And again to me the reasonable path IMO is to teach respect as well as individuality, my comments are not for one second against people who have a different life style, sexual orientation or belief system, not at all. The goal IMO is to create division and strife in order that the left be able to fulfill their dreams, because it can not happen any other way other than through lying, manipulation and deceit.

  • Kevin R.

    Too bad we can’t bill the responsible party – the democrat party.

  • Cotour

    Related because its all outrageous and crazy and meant to be outrageous and crazy:

    Lets be hopeful that he does not parallel JFK too closely.

    http://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/13/after-talking-with-trump-bill-gates-likens-president-elect-to-jfk.html

    Because it sounds like Trump is willing to be disruptive and confrontational to the status quo / powers that be, the other day he essentially questioned the competence of the CIA with all of this Russia hack / elector revolt theory of denying him the presidency.

  • Steve Earle

    Politics is a pendulum, and each side has their time at the top. Now it’s the Republican’s turn.

    The problem is that the Democrats have been much more effective at using their time at the top than the Republicans.

    The Left has co-opted the Democrats and moved the Societal/Cultural Ratchet several notches to the left each time they have had power. Obamacare is just one of their “successes”. I say that in quotes because I believe it was meant to fail and usher in Single-Payer.

    The Right has a small window to move the Ratchet back, but unless they are very committed to this, which I suspect they are not, then all we have done is slow the rush to Socialism by a couple of years.

    Once the Left is back in power, they will just pick up where they left off.

    The Right needs to play long-term and not just re-arrange the deck chairs. If they don’t eliminate programs and agencies ENTIRELY now while they have the chance, then all of this will have been for naught.

  • wayne

    Steve Earle–
    Great Stuff!

    I fear, the RINO’s will just busily re-arrange the deck-chairs, like they always do.

    Rinse/Mitch/Ryan, can’t wait to borrow a trillion dollars & DJT thinks the Feds are in-charge of building your local airports, schools, and other assorted “infra-structure.”

    We gave them the House, they did nothing. We gave them the Senate, they did less than nothing. Now, we gave them the White House, and we shall see.

    [The head of Exxon– he’s totally in the tank for the entire Bush family, and the new RNC head?– Romney’s niece– a well known RINO in Michigan.]

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