The death throes of Obamacare

Remember the accusation leveled against Obamacare about "death panels"? Maybe we need a death panel for laws like Obamacare? We need someone who can decide the law isn't working as intended, and just kill it.

The latest evidence: Aetna's decision to pull out of the many of the Obamacare marketplaces:

Aetna said it will exit 11 of the 15 states where it offers coverage through the Affordable Care Act, widely known as Obamacare. That affects about 80 percent of its customers covered through insurance marketplaces.

This follows:

Earlier this month, Humana said it will cut back its participation on the exchanges from 15 states to 11. On an earnings call in July, UnitedHealth Group chief executive Stephen Hemsley announced that his company plans to remain on “three or fewer exchange markets.” 

In a reversal of expectations, Anthem said it is projecting mid-single-digit losses on the individual plans it sells on the exchanges for 2016. And Cigna has said that it is losing money on the exchanges, although the insurer is planning to expand its marketplace presence to three new states in 2017.

By the way, whoever is in charge of Cigna needs to have a "come to Jesus" talk with whoever made that decision. Expanding in a market where everyone is losing money sounds like a Trumpian idea (aka it will lead to "YUGE" losses).

Speaking of Trump, what will our our presidential candidates promising to do? (NOTE: What they actually do may differ.)

GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has suggested that he would seek to scrap it altogether. Quoting a news story by Reuters on Tuesday, he tweeted: “Another health insurer is pulling back due to ‘persistent financial losses on #Obamacare plans.’ Only the beginning!” 

Note that Trump's solution is fairly involved and touching many areas. Expect Obamacare II.

Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has pledged to modify the law to expand coverage and wants to add a public insurance option.

Translation: Expect the "public option" to eventually take over. Public programs versus private programs have a winning track record, since they can lose as much money as they want without ever showing a profit. However, the private insurance options will still exist since they also have to provide service, whereas the public option won't have to do anything (expect to have public insurance that is filled with Catch-22's for a long time).

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein's view:

"Establish an improved “Medicare For All” single-payer public health insurance program to provide everyone with quality health care, at huge savings."

Socialized medicine in a population of 300 million people is an unwieldy and monstrously bad idea. In addition to the fact you are taking an entire profession (healthcare) and nationalizing it (read: enslaving it to become government bureaucrats). So the whole "quality health care, at huge savings" is at best impossible, and at worst a lie. You can make it work in a small European country with a population the size of New York City, but not with 300 million people.

Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson's view:

"No, government should not be involved in healthcare." 

That is NOT "replace it with my plan". That IS get government out of healthcare completely. DING DING DING! We have a winner!

Second party payment plans are NOT insurance, regardless of whether it is coming from the government or the government-supported private sector. As long as people have no reason to be accountable for their own healthcare, they won't.

Now if you want to have a system to handle and pay for unexpected healthcare emergencies, that is a different beast, and should be handled separately from routine healthcare public policy questions. Going to a doctor for your high blood pressure is a different matter than "being catastrophically injured in a car accident". We first need to separate "routine healthcare" from "catastrophic healthcare", and THEN have this discussion.