BOOM: Blue Cross Blue Shield Requests Whopping 60% Rate Hike in 2017 Thanks to Obamacare

[rangerrebew]

BOOM: Blue Cross Blue Shield Requests Whopping 60% Rate Hike in 2017 Thanks to Obamacare
June 2, 2016 | Melissa Dykes | The Daily Sheeple

http://www.thedailysheeple.com/boom-blue-cross-blue-shield-requests-whopping-60-rate-hike-in-2017-thanks-to-obamacare_062016

 
If you like your healthcare provider you can keep your healthcare provider… provided you pay a whopping 60% rate hike starting next year.

The Houston Chronicle is reporting that Blue Cross Blue Shield has requested a 60% rate increase in 2017 in Texas following complaints from the company that it is “losing money in the federal heatlh exchanges because some customers have proven more costly to cover than anticipated”.

In other words, the cost of insuring people under the so-called “Affordable” Care Act is going to force prices to skyrocket to potentially unaffordable levels for everyone.

    According to filings listed on healthcare.gov, Blue Cross and Blue Shield seeks increases between 57.33 percent and 59.35 percent for two of its Blue Advantage Plus plans. A Blue Advantage Health Maintenance Organization Plan is asking for a 58.6 percent hike…

In a country where the cost of living is going up on virtually all fronts but wages and jobs are not increasing, exactly who is going to be able to afford this insane rate hike? And that’s just to pay for the insurance in case you get sick…

According to the report, it is unclear what will happen if the rate hike request is not granted. When the same company requested a 51% increase in rates in New Mexico last year and the request was denied, the company simply withdrew all healthcare plans from the entire state.

It’s a domino effect. Obamacare is imploding the nation’s health care system.

    Insurers across the nation, including Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas, have complained vigorously that they are losing money in the federal exchanges as some customers have proven more costly to cover than anticipated.

Blue Cross Blue Shield isn’t the only company that has been reporting large profit losses due to Obamacare. UnitedHealthcare has reported losses of $650 million. Humana reported a 46% loss in the first quarter of 2016 alone.

As more and more private health insurance companies complain of profit losses and pull out of states who refuse to hike rates to unaffordable levels, it is highly likely the situation will become unsustainable and ultimately used as an excuse for the government to take control over all healthcare, moving the US to a national system just like in the UK or Canada.

In fact, this is exactly what Senator Harry Reid said that Obamacare was a step towards when it was first rolled out: a single-payer national health care system. Now we’re watching it happen.

But look at the way our servicemen and women who go to the VA in this country are treated. They die waiting in two-year-long lines to receive care. It’s so bad, one Navy vet recently set himself on fire in front of a VA in protest.

Considering our government can’t even make a noodle salad efficiently, the crash and burn of Obamacare as a problem-reaction-solution forcing us onto a single-payer national system could be a nightmare for anyone who depends on America’s already broken health care system for their health.

[geronl]

Insane

[SirLinksALot]

House Republicans  promised to offer a plan to repeal and replace ObamaCare. I'm still waiting for it.

What Obama/Pelosi/Reid and the Dems gave us in 2010 is clearly not working. You're imposing draconian increases on premiums for 90% of the population who have health insurance in order to be able to provide coverage for the less than 10% of population who don't have insurance. This is nuts.

UnitedHealth has already abandoned most ObamaCare markets. So did Anthem Blue Cross, Aetna, and Humana . They have already warned that losses trying to sell ObamaCare plans are “unsustainable” — $3 billion a year, according to Standard and Poor’s — and they’ll either stop selling the plans or significantly raise premiums.

 Even Hillary Clinton’s campaign admits the cost of ObamaCare plans is already “crushing.”

Here's my personal "desiderata" as to what should be the elements of any replacement for Obamacare:

K.I.S.S ( Keep it simple stupid ): Don’t give us another 2700 page monstrosity that lawmakers vote on without reading first.

LIVE UNDER YOUR OWN LAW: Under Obamacare, members of Congress and their staffs get lavish subsidies — as much as $12,000 a year — to pay their ObamaCare premiums. Who the heck gets such benefits? Nobody else in America earning close to $174,000 a year (a member’s base pay) qualifies for a subsidy.

Don’t try to sell health plans to chronically ill people and healthy people for the same price: That’s like trying to feed a Pussycat and a Tiger on the same budget. It won't work! Five percent of the population with chronic illnesses consumes roughly 50 percent of health care. When plans are priced the same for everyone, the sick rush to buy and the healthy refuse, because it’s a bad deal. That’s what drove healthy people out of the insurance market in New York two decades ago, and it’s doing the same thing nationwide now. Help the chronically ill with separate risk pools of their own (35 states had them before ObamaCare forced them to close). That’s fairer than making insurance unaffordable for healthy people.

Make insurance premiums fully tax deductible, whether you get your plan at work or buy it yourself: Love him or hate him, that's Trump's proposed plan.

Don’t pay for health reform on the backs of retirees: Obamacare robbed over $700 billion from Medicare to subsidize new entitlements for other groups. This is like robbing grandma to spread the wealth. It’s making it harder for seniors to find doctors who take Medicare, limiting hip and knee replacements and sticking seniors with surprise emergency-room bills. BTW, have a look at then, not-yet-speaker Paul Ryan's plan, it did the same thing didn't it? (somebody correct me on this ).

Open Up the Healthcare Markets for Interstate Competition It's ridiculous that someone like me who lives in NY cannot cross state lines to get a healthcare policy from say, Georgia when I find it more to my liking. Doing this will cause healthcare providers to innovate and will cut down the cost of healthcare further via market forces (competition).


Checklists Instead of Mandates: Individuals and Families should be able to choose the kind of health insurance they want to pay for instead of the Obamacare one-size-fit-all mandates where Seniors have to pay for childcare, obstetrics, drug rehabilitation, birth control etc. when they don't need these things.

Liability reform: My Internal Medicine doctor tells me he has to pay over $120,000 in NYC just to cover his own liability/mal-practice insurance. Guess where he passes this cost to?