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Aetna CEO Threatened Obamacare Pullout If Feds Opposed Humana Merger

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142 points helloworld | 2 comments | 17 Aug 16 17:52 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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seibelj ◴[17 Aug 16 18:06 UTC] No.12306806[source]▶
Can anyone succinctly explain the benefits of having a market for private health insurance companies, rather than a single provider of health insurance (government, aka "public option")? Can a capitalist case be made for their existence? Does the lack of a large private insurance market in countries with government-provided health insurance cause lots of inefficiencies and waste?
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VonGuard ◴[17 Aug 16 18:10 UTC] No.12306849[source]▶
There is no benefit. The benefit is for the legislatures who passed the law. There was no way that we'd get single payer here in the US because our Congress is very much in the pocket of the health care industry. As such, the markets were a compromise measure enacted by congress to make it easier for people to choose health care. Before Obamacare, it was sort of a black box where only HR people could figure out pricing structures and health care providers didn't really compete in any way with each other.

Obamacare did do some good things that needed to be done, but essentially, everything about it was a bandaid intended to kick this shitty system down the road to the next person who had to deal with it. But hey, at least health care companies can't just turn you down because you have Diabetes or are too fat anymore.

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eridius ◴[17 Aug 16 18:16 UTC] No.12306932[source]▶
There's no way that we'd get single payer here because the Republican party has convinced their base that single-payer health care is socialism and that socialism is evil, which leads to the situation where poor people who desperately need health care and can't afford it still oppose single-payer even though they stand to gain the most from it.
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1. ecommerceguy ◴[17 Aug 16 20:43 UTC] No.12308309[source]▶
I think you'll be remiss to find that the majority of insurance company donations go to the Democratic party. Of course poor people have been voting Democrat for over 50 years and they are, for the most part, still poor. Que Einstein quote.
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2. eridius ◴[18 Aug 16 00:00 UTC] No.12309475[source]▶
> I think you'll be remiss to find that the majority of insurance company donations go to the Democratic party.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. Are you saying I'll determine that to be the case if I'm lacking attention, or are you saying that I'm lacking attention and therefore don't know that? I'm also not sure what the point is either way, why the truth or falsehood of this statement is relevant to my comment.

> Of course poor people have been voting Democrat for over 50 years and they are, for the most part, still poor.

This also doesn't make any sense. Nobody said that voting for either party would make you rich. Making health care accessible to the poor doesn't make them less poor, it just gives them health care.

> Que Einstein quote.

What quote?