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.
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 print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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
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.
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 print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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
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.”