Obamacare in Tennessee near collapse
Finding out what’s in it: Faced with closure of all of its Obamacare health insurance options, officials in Tennessee have been forced to approve rate increases ranging from 44 to 62 percent.
The rate approvals, while a tough decision, were necessary to ensure that consumers around the state had options when open enrollment begins in November, said Julie Mix McPeak, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance. BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee is the only insurer to sell statewide and there was the possibility that Cigna and Humana would reduce their footprints or leave the market altogether.
“I would characterize the exchange market in Tennessee as very near collapse … and that all of our efforts are really focused on making sure we have as many writers in the areas as possible, knowing that might be one. I’m doing everything I can to prevent a situation where that turns to zero,” McPeak said to The Tennessean. [emphasis mine]
Anyone with any brains (such as the conservatives who predicted in 2010 that this would happen) can see that with these ungodly increases, it is very unlikely that those same insurance options will survive through next year. Be prepared for the complete collapse of the health insurance industry.
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Finding out what’s in it: Faced with closure of all of its Obamacare health insurance options, officials in Tennessee have been forced to approve rate increases ranging from 44 to 62 percent.
The rate approvals, while a tough decision, were necessary to ensure that consumers around the state had options when open enrollment begins in November, said Julie Mix McPeak, commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance. BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee is the only insurer to sell statewide and there was the possibility that Cigna and Humana would reduce their footprints or leave the market altogether.
“I would characterize the exchange market in Tennessee as very near collapse … and that all of our efforts are really focused on making sure we have as many writers in the areas as possible, knowing that might be one. I’m doing everything I can to prevent a situation where that turns to zero,” McPeak said to The Tennessean. [emphasis mine]
Anyone with any brains (such as the conservatives who predicted in 2010 that this would happen) can see that with these ungodly increases, it is very unlikely that those same insurance options will survive through next year. Be prepared for the complete collapse of the health insurance industry.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four 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.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed 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.
I would like to restate a comment I made on this web site years ago:
In 1998 I was getting private hospitalization insurance in Washington State. It cost $40/month($55 for over 65’s), with $500 deductible, with 20% copay up to $2000 total maximum!!! I kid you not. Affordable and sane.
Then “progressives” in Washington state invoked Obamacare lite(~1998 health care “reforms”) which restricted and mandated the Washington private policies, in ways you would expect “progressives” fools to do. The health care private insurers warned that this would cause prices to skyrocket. And so it came to pass within a few years.
Don’t allow anyone to say private healthcare was not affordable.
“Progressives” could simply not “stand” that it was not free for some guy living in a van down by the river, that’s all…but they were not willing to simply provide “free care” with general funds…that would cost real state money. So they forced the burden on others(as “progressives” authoritarian despots always do), and destroyed a VERY affordable private system in the process. Obamacare is the federal version of the same story.
Even vouchers for the “poor” using that private system would have cost far less than what we have gotten.
Almost certainly, these facts will not matter to “progressives”. They will find some way to ignore them. The tragedy is that a “Tyranny of the Majority” can force those authoritarian inanities on the rest of us.
But I suspect even “conservative” republicans like Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell would not propose going back to the totally free market insurance principles (no Government mandates/restrictions at all) that created such an affordable sane health insurance market…and prices from now on will always be exorbitant, and options limited.
MD Mill: The same exact same thing happened to me in New York back in 1992. I even wrote an article about it for the Foundation for Economic Education. And everything I predicted back in 1994 came true, as it has now come true for the entire United States.
As Ronald Reagan so wisely said, “The trouble with our Liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”