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Another Obamacare co-op to fold

Finding out what’s in it: The fourteenth of the original twenty-three Obamacare state health insurance co-ops has announced it is closing shop.

I like this quote from the article:

Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, which advocates for free-market solutions in the health industry, said those who wanted the co-ops to be part of Obamacare believed “if they didn’t have a profit, they could charge less money, provide more service.” But she said the cascade of failures “is an indictment of the idealistic notion that you could put people in charge of billions of dollars who have little or no experience in the insurance industry.”

Across the country, the federal government loaned $2.4 billion to launch the co-ops [emphasis mine]

In other words, Obamacare was written and run by people didn’t have the slightest idea what they were doing, but they not only went ahead with it, but then handed out billions in taxpayer money to their friends, money that will never be returned. Pretty good gig, if you can get it!

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.

 
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6 comments

  • D K Rögnvald Williams

    They knew exactly what they were doing.

  • BSJ

    As nutty as they are in Vermont, the State government turned down one COOPs application to provide coverage.

    They said it wasn’t “finically viable”.

    Imagine how BAD it had to be for even this State to say it wouldn’t work!

    BTW, they are commissioning yet another study to see if the State sponsored program should continue, or should they go Federal… MILLIONS were spent to get it running in the first place!

  • Vladislaw

    In other words you are absolutely and totally wrong on why the CO-OPs failed.

    “As they were negotiating the Affordable Care Act, Democrats wanted a public option. They wanted a uniform option available to everyone across the country for health insurance. That wasn’t going to happen.

    But, as an alternative, they created these independent, nonprofit co-ops that were to be an alternative to the traditional insurer. And it was to be an option for consumers.”

    “But they ran into a few roadblocks. For example, in a budget deal a few years ago, the funding for co-ops was cut. There recently was an announcement from the Department of Health and Human Services they couldn’t give these companies and others as much as anticipated to help offset some of the higher-cost cases. And that’s where some of the co-ops got into trouble.

    Some of them were very popular. They were low-cost alternatives. That meant sometimes sicker beneficiaries came to them. And that’s where some of the financial problems happened.”

    “They had basically had solvency issues, financial solvency issues.

    If they were the lower price point, that tended to attract sicker beneficiaries. That would drive up their costs. They had anticipated fairly large payments from the federal government to help offset the cost of those sicker folks.

    But, of course, as we mentioned earlier, there was a change and their funding was cut early on in inception of the co-ops. And then, secondly, there was another legislative change that adjusted the amount of money that the federal government could pay them.”

    The Co-ops were PROMISED a certain amount of funding BEFORE they started. AFTER they started the funding was CUT and then IMMEDIATLY republicans and conservatives shouted.. see government doesn’t work.

    A tried and true tactic for the conservative.. keep cutting an agency to the bone and they complain how it doesn’t work.

    http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/nearly-half-obamacare-co-ops-folded/

  • wayne

    Vladislaw:
    You my friend, are sadly misinformed.
    >I’d say something totally inappropriate & get banned, but I’ll let your own words define you.

  • wayne

    Vladislaw:
    In the spirit of enlightenment & education;
    I would highly recommend you investigate this podcast:

    “Munger on Middlemen”
    http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2008/10/munger_on_middl.html
    -An extremely understandable discussion on the purpose of “people and/or institution’s” which occupy the hated function of being “middlemen,” in all aspects of economic activity & the allocation of resources.

    Lays waste to the fallacy that “non-profit’s,” “co-ops,” & other anti-capitalist “business organizations” are able to cut out the “evil profit motive” & supply any goods/services anywhere near as efficiently as private business.

    You appear to misunderstand the concept of “insurance” as well.
    “Healthcare” is not “right,” for if it were, you would be advocating taking the labor of other’s by force. And if so, I would refer you to the other thread currently going regarding slavery, aka “The Defense of Little Round Top.” http://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/the-defense-of-little-round-top

    D K Rögnvald Williams:
    You perceptively covered it all, right on point.

  • Edward

    Vladislaw,
    You wrote: “A tried and true tactic for the conservative.. keep cutting an agency to the bone and they complain how it doesn’t work.”

    You have it backwards. Conservatives complained that the law would not work *before* it was passed, which would be before it was funded. They even used liberal Democrats’ own words that the law was *intended* to fail so that single payer (AKA socialized medicine) could be incorporated as the fix to Obamacare.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqBlaz4yGyw (1 minute)

    We Americans were “Grubered” by the liberal Democrats, they considered us too stupid to understand that Obamacare was intended to fail, but conservatives figured it out even before it passed:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Adrdmmh7bMo (2 minutes)
    Gruber was not talking about conservatives, when he called the American voter stupid, because conservatives had already figured out that Obamacare would necessarily fail. He was calling liberals and Democrats stupid, and counting upon their stupidity to help pass this terrible, unworkable law. The law is so unworkable that many changes in implementing it have been made — against the law as written — and have unilaterally come from Obama, without consultation of Congress, after he signed it into law.

    Conservatives are not saying, “Hey, this law does not work,” but “See, we told you it would not work!” Conservatives had nothing to do with it not working. Only the Democrats in Congress had any say in its composition, only Democrats voted in favor of it, and only Obama has made any changes to it. No Republican or conservative input, change, or authorization has ever been done to this law.

    It was passed in early 2010, but here is a complaint from the year before, comparing the proposed Obamacare to Canada’s care:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2jijuj1ysw (20 minutes)

    Please notice, at the 7:50 mark, that even the official Canadian healthcare clinic recommended that their potential customer try an illegal private clinic. (The Canadian government recognizes that its official clinics are so bad at providing medical care that they do nothing to stop the private clinics from doing business.) At the ten minute mark, he interviews a woman whose mother lost both her legs, because the one-year delay in treatment resulted in her second leg being “ruined” too, as she phrased it. Government healthcare can literally cost you an arm or a leg.

    In addition, conservatives complained that their representatives continued to fund Obamacare despite their desire that it be defunded, killed, buried, and incinerated (I may be exaggerating a little on the incineration). Conservatives looked at similar government-run healthcare fiascoes, such as the British National Healthcare System, the Canadian healthcare system, and the US Veteran’s Administration and realized that governments are huge, uncaring, bureaucratic, inefficient, ineffective monstrosities that do far more harm than good, when they expand from their basic functions of protecting their populations from foreign and domestic enemies, peacefully resolving disputes, and staying out of the way of the population’s ability to prosper. Think of these three basic functions as protecting life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

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