Health Insurance Markets Fade To Red

The Times saves this vivisection of the ObamaCare insurance exchanges for a summertime Saturday think piece:

Cost, Not Choice, Is Top Concern of Health Insurance Customers

By Reed Abelson  Aug 13  2016

It is all about the price.

Millions of people buying insurance in the marketplaces created by the federal health care law have one feature in mind. It is not finding a favorite doctor, or even a trusted company. It is how much — or, more precisely, how little — they can pay in premiums each month.

And for many of them, especially those who are healthy, all the prices are too high.

The unexpected laser focus on price has contributed to hundreds of millions of dollars in losses among the country’s top insurers, as fewer healthy people than expected have signed up. And that has created two vexing questions: Will the major insurance companies stay in the marketplaces? And if they do, will the public have a wide array of plans to choose from — a central tenet of the 2010 Affordable Care Act?

“The marketplace has been and continues to be unsustainable,” said Joseph R. Swedish, chief executive of Anthem, one of the nation’s largest insurers.

If forced to buy something they don't want (at prevailing prices) people will buy as little as possible. Surprise!

 

Comments

[geezer]

want my number?

[RattlerGator]

Gonna be 100 degrees in DC today. Time for Florida Boy to charge hard out into the heat and humidity. But I have to catch up on some of your rants first.

[Old Lurker]

This strikes me as really really dumb:

http://nypost.com/2016/08/13/bill-clinton-accuses-fbi-of-serving-up-a-load-of-bull/

More popcorn, please.

[henry]

Typical Dems, defying the laws, defying the laws of physics (global warming), and defying the laws of economics in healthcare.

Wonder why productivity is falling? Use ACA to jack healthcare insurance costs for a decade, increasing cost per man hour of production with exactly zero improvement in goods produced. Simple math.

[Threadkiller]

OL, it reinforces my theory that Bill wants to be the only President Clinton in the Crime Family Tree.

Leaping and bounding across the tarmac to spoon Lynch cinched it for me.

He will continue to undermine her.

[Threadkiller]

Lurker Susie has demolished the previous thread.

I feel ill.

[narciso]

Hey this is the scam they pulled eighteen years ago and it worked, so why mess with the formula.

The practical side of this travismockasham is you can't afford to use the insurance, so python comes to life.

[Old Lurker]

I hear you, TK, but that approach to poke a stick in Comey's integrity box strikes me as suicidal for Bill too.

Of course that works just fine for me.

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

Anyone think Huma has the integrity to hold a Wiener roast?
Me neither.

Dude needs an intervention. With a sock full of quarters.

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

The Week in Pictures: Suction Cup Edition

[narciso]

Ah reed I remember his entraily tales when he was at Barron's.

[henry]

Uniform early voting hours statewide (voting "restrictions" per the media) to the 7th Circuit. It seems many federal circuit judges think vote fraud is a Constitutional right. (Why not, abortion got penumbras).

[RattlerGator]

Scott Adams sounds just like RG. Anyone seen them together in the same room?
As Rush Limbaugh is reported to have said, "Trump is living rent free in the Dems' heads."
Posted by: Frau Rutger Gefahrfeld | August 12, 2016 at 03:57 PM

My, my. That's high praise, Frau, but I'm likely far too partisan for his tastes. But, I am as amazed as he is at just how much Trump keeps forcing people to do his work for him (Obama-ISIS, Obama-ISIS, Obama-ISIS -- eventually people do remember the JV comment, don't they?). And, I'm equally amazed how many politicos and media types insist of spouting a narrative that is going nowhere. I mean, they keep talking (in the most hopeful terms possible) about a crisis in the GOP that doesn't exist.

Gives an entirely different take on Keep Hope Alive, doesn't it? Rather like those Health Insurance markets, I'd say.

[Threadkiller]

He would drown both of them if being rescued ment a lifetime her cackling about sharing his status+1.

+1 that she broke through the glass ceiling.

No way he goes back to The Whitehouse as a whipped ex-prez.

I would load The Energizer up on PCP, suck down a bottle of Viagra, order the finest bottle of champagne I could get in a Vegas penthouse, if I were him.

The cops would run out of chalk and number cards when they try to piece everything back together.

[Threadkiller]

meant

[Old Lurker]

Wonderful image, TK, just wonderful.

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

An almost perfect illustration of how free markets can never be avoided forever and how government planning always leads to consequences for someone.
ZIRP leads insurance companies to go looking for yield to avoid bankruptcy. Buy high grade energy debt. Free-market tanks artificial oil prices. High grade debt now junk, much of which is in default or nearly so.
Government regulators working feverishly to resolve last problem they created apparently blissfully unaware they are creating new ones.

[narciso]

One wonders of Pearson specter scenarios are too tame, the energizer seems to have the gumption to join the big time, look what happened with her husband's hedgefund.

[Captain Hate]

Two of the most overrated things in politics are Slick's political ability and intelligence.

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

Excellent primer on cultural Marxism, the Frankfurt School, Lukacs and Marcuse.
These communist scum and their agenda are indistinguishable from and the progenitors of today's Democrat Party.
Remember that the next time some clean toga nevertrumper or CoC type demands we use our best manners with and impute only patriotic, constitutionalist motives and reach across the aisle to the gang of criminals, rapists and tyrants we're fighting against, to the extent we're fighting at all.

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

Wretchard's latest.

[Tom Bowler]

TK,
...it reinforces my theory that Bill wants to be the only President Clinton in the Crime Family Tree.

I've been thinking the Clintons will be paving the way for President Chelsea to succeed President Hillary if they manage to pull this one off.

OL,
I hear you, TK, but that approach to poke a stick in Comey's integrity box strikes me as suicidal for Bill too.

Comey? Integrity? Oxymoron?

[lyle]

Per Ig's 10:52, I trust all JOMers have read Michael Walsh's excellent book, The Devil's Pleasure Palace by now, yes?

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

From Wretchard;

Barack Obama bids fair to be remembered as the Florence Foster Jenkins of politics. Like that socialite he can't perform his job for beans. Like that socialite his friends are covering up for him.

Ouch. Painful because it's so true.

[lyle]

Also, if anyone still believes--beyond the mountain of evidence to the contrary--that the GOP is actually an opposition to the [redacted] Marxists running the D crime syndicate, go read Scott Johnson's piece at Powerline regarding the Rs fulling funding DoE's OCR. Then get back to me.

[lyle]

Wait, check that. If anyone reads that piece and still believes in the integrity of the GOP, you're beyond help.

[Miss Marple 2]

I just happened across a clip of Bill Kristol on CNN last night and all I can tell you is that I hope someone punches that grinning possum faced creep in the nose.

I have never liked him as I consider him a consummate Beltway trouble-maker, but his comments about Trump were over the top and he was LAUGHING about how Trump would lose.

The party has been divided by people like him and Levin and the rest of the Never Trump people. I hope there are way more blue collar guys than those people, as we are going to have to replace their votes.

Grrr.

[Miss Marple 2]

http://www.wnd.com/2016/08/2012-pentagon-report-warned-obama-was-creating-isis/#Ebixp1XOmhb2VggO.99

[Buckeye]

Food for thought...

A night or two ago, Bret Baier did a short piece on the polls, in essence vouching for their and FNC integrity.

Explained and showed graphs with Clinton vs. Trump, and demonstrated the consequence of removing on-line polls, then advocacy group polls and what remained, just the average of the "gold standard polls".

Of course their reporting uses the "gold standard", which showed Clinton with the lead.

He did caution people that polls can change quickly and at the very end, mentioned that the "gold standard polls" where still measuring registered voters and "things might change" once they switch to likely voter.

Ya think?

Don't let the media discourage you with the canned narrative. If you haven't yet, read the Wretchard linked above.

[Miss Marple 2]

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/sessions-obama-wants-a-lame-duck-trade-deal/article/2599261?custom_click=rss

[Old Lurker]

Tom Bowler, you and I know that he has no integrity. But what counts here is that HE thinks he does and that it has now been attacked.

[cheerleader]

Miss Marple

Kristol laughed and smirked that Trump would never win the nomination.

He's so full of himself that he can't
process anything else. He's unteachable. Merkel level stupid.

[maryrose]

Clintons and Obama are exposed for who they truly are and it is nt a pretty picture.Either kill them or trash them. It is the Clinton way.

[Threadkiller]

I've been thinking the Clintons will be paving the way for President Chelsea to succeed President Hillary if they manage to pull this one off.

I know I'm the resident loon, but I believe that she is not the product of Slick's loins.

Bill will not let there be another "President Clinton" in his lifetime.

[Porchlight]

Polls can and will change.

It's also interesting to wonder whether likely voter screens are able to capture Trump supporters who haven't voted regularly in recent elections.

[Miss Marple 2]

Buckeye,

I have a serious question about the polls. How do they determine "registered voters?"

Do they ask people? Or are they calling people from lists of registered voters?

Because if it is the latter, they are missing people who will register from now until election day and have not voted in some time.

[buccaneer morgan]

carrying over from the other thread. these constructivist platforms, that they pwned over on neil, don't work, students know less every single year, about math, and I assume other subjects, as well,

[Threadkiller]

Remember when the polls showed how many people were birthers?

It was a huge segment of the voters, compared to what the #NeverJOMers would have had us believe.

Romney crapped on that poll and those voters and got schlonged.

Now, a birther is top dog.

Maybe I should believe the polls...

[cheerleader]

I think Trump has a better picture of the lay of the land than I do, and despite the idiots who think he's a stalking horse for Hillary, I just don't think he'd be knocking himself out as hard as he is, if he didn't think his goal is much more than a little bit viable.

[Porchlight]

For Iggy:

[cheerleader]

If the eligibility rules favored the globalist cause, the non birthers would be the biggest birthers on the planet.

[Miss Marple 2]

That "Your mother is voting for Trump" comment at a protestor really stung.

So much that his brother had to write a damn article about how it wasn't true! HA!

https://medium.com/@NickScrimenti/no-mr-trump-my-mother-is-not-voting-for-you-a32f25395b76#.5bh2tptr4

[rse]

When the whole point is a mentality that can only 'muddle through' or 'bounded rationality' constructivism isn't a different way of teaching. It's a euphemism to obscure the radical change in focus.

[buccaneer morgan]

some one tell harry lime,

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37072847?ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbc_breaking&ns_source=twitter&ns_linkname=news_central

I'm guessing it's not a budding william tell,

[buccaneer morgan]

well there is that, but in addition, they can't add, there's an extra long division procedure, that would flummox a sphinx, it's like that phony yiddish, that bezos was promoting on the late night thread,

[rse]

Productive Struggle and Rigor prepare the poor students for a world of 'wicked problems' as they are called in the planning and cybernetics literature.

http://business.unr.edu/faculty/Kuechler/788/softsysaslearningandmgttool.pdf is an example.

Think of all the bushes as using education to create internalized steerable keels without explaining it that way. The didn't JUST go into politics for the lucre and cronyism. Why do you think they get along so well with the clintons. They like being in the Steering Class.

[Sidwhite]

Porch, I think this year HRC and DT will prove to be atypical regarding polls. How do the pollsters quantify the millions of new voters and millions of previously registered voters who haven't voted for the GOPe in the last few elections. I considered not voting McCain until he picked Sara. I read that a Likely Voter is one who voted in last two prez elections. This time around with so many neg thoughts about both candidates, the one with the most enthusiastic following may have an advantage. Trump has a YUUGGEE advantage.

[Threadkiller]

That "Your mother is voting for Trump" comment at a protestor really stung.

Normally I would post "Jerkstore."

These aren't normal times...

https://youtu.be/08onmi-WCfQ

[Threadkiller]

That "Your mother is voting for Trump" comment at a protestor really stung.

Normally I would post "Jerkstore."

These aren't normal times...

https://youtu.be/08onmi-WCfQ

[Sidwhite]

Sorry Porch but I think my poll comment was actually inspired by Cheerleader. I guess your picture was also pinging me.

[Miss Marple 2]

If Trump wins this, we will see a complete change in how campaigns are conducted.

Also, perhaps the end of "political experts" on news stations.

If Bill Kristol will go bankrupt, that will be a side benefit of great worth.

[Threadkiller]

Hopefully it is bankruptcy by Bunga.

[Buckeye]

Sure would be interesting to see a poll that determines enthusiasm.

[Miss Marple 2]

TK! TK!

There's more!

The Washington Post actually FACT CHECKED the "Your mother is voting for Trump" line!!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/12/that-protesters-mama-probably-isnt-voting-for-donald-trump/

I think the press is about at the end of what they can do. They are truly making fools of themselves.

Here is the tweet storm of replies the reporter got:

https://twitter.com/wpjenna/status/764488795055992837

[Threadkiller]

A Twit Storm

[Miss Marple 2]

Some billionaires want to make America Great Again.

And some do other things:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3738253/Billionaire-Los-Angeles-Rams-owner-Stan-Kroenke-tells-hundreds-fixed-income-residents-Texas-newly-bought-land.html

[maryrose]

I overheard three guys talking outside at a Starbucks today.
Said Trump has some good ideas but has to watch what he says out loud a little bit more.
Just thought I would pass that thought along.

[Threadkiller]

People talking outloud recommend that other people shouldn't talk outloud?

;-)

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

--that grinning possum faced creep--

Some comments are almost perfectly constructed.
Exhibit A. :)

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

Excellent variation on the theme, Porch.

[IcedCoffee]

Was it obams LTOW or hilly's diasporadic discriminaton, cia and UN policies that grew them? Soon, pan arabism will rise out of the pan islam ashes as clinton discriminatory foreign policies get even more aggressive aggrevating what some have called regional pan arab discrimination, until the rise of pan islam. Good news until clinton coups the countries who knew she always targeted them.