Humana abandoning Obamacare

To read this post please scroll down.

Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

So please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. I could really use the support at this time. There are five ways of doing so:

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation. Takes about a 10% cut.

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription, which takes about a 15% cut:

4. Donate by check. I get whatever you donate. Make the check payable to Robert Zimmerman and mail it to

Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.

July 21, 2016 6:45 pm Robert Zimmerman

Finding out what’s in it. Humana, one of the nation’s largest heathcare companies, has decided to leave almost half of its Obamacare markets next year.

Humana, one of the nation’s top health insurers, is pulling out of ObamaCare plans in all but a handful of states after a year of nearly $1 billion in losses. The company plans to exit nearly half of its Obamacare markets next year, the company announced during an earnings report Thursday. It will take part in “no more” than 11 state marketplaces, down from 19 states this year, the company said. [emphasis mine]

Remember, it was the insurance companies that lobbied the hardest for Obamacare, figuring they would clean up once the government forced everyone to buy their product. In looking at the numbers above, $1 billion in loses in one year alone, it sure seems that strategy has backfired big time on the insurance companies.

Then again, how could they have possibly known this would happen? No one anticipated this at all, except for those evil tea partiers and those racist conservatives. And who listens to them?

2 comments

wayne
July 22, 2016 at 8:20 pm
Related tangent but the source article is behind a paywall at the Wall Street Journal. (7-22-16)
In brief, 2 major points;
-There are mergers currently proposed between the likes of United Health, Cigna, Humana, and others & sorry.. but I am not recalling who-wants-to-buy-whom. It apparently has the effect of turning the top 8 insurers, into 5. (they need to consolidate, to cut “duplication” of services and “divest” of “legacy expenses.” > that’s ominous…)

-Antitrust division of the DOJ filed suit today, hoping to block at least 2 mergers, on the grounds it will impede “the current high quality & cost savings under the ACA,” & violate antitrust laws in general. (how ironic is that– think about it.)

Top 2 insurers, each manage roughly 30-40 million accounts. And interestingly, but not unexpectedly, each wants to exit as many Obamacare “exchanges” as they can, each lost about 1 billion in the past 1-2 years, but each makes money on their non-exchange policies. Each book about 100 billion gross/year, and their mandated pay-out is like 82%, (or in other words, they get to keep roughly 18% for administration) (and that pay-out rate ratchet ups over time) on-average. Payouts on exchange-policies are something like 150% (they lose 50 cents on the dollar)

It’s a massive cross-(tri)-subsidy (across time & space, “everybody”) between regular group policies, the government “exchange” variants & associated subsidies, and straight Medicaid/Medicare policies.

The incentives are perverse, & cash-flows, are all in the wrong direction.
wayne
July 22, 2016 at 9:09 pm
A fairly good article, clarifying my previous babble

http://ctmirror.org/2016/07/21/justice-dept-sues-to-block-aetna-humana-anthem-cigna-mergers/

Loretta Lynch to the rescue…or something.
We are through the Looking Glass.

Humana abandoning Obamacare

2 comments

Leave a Reply