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Aetna CEO Threatened Obamacare Pullout If Feds Opposed Humana Merger

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142 points helloworld | 3 comments | 17 Aug 16 17:52 UTC | HN request time: 0.692s | 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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gozur88 ◴[17 Aug 16 20:07 UTC] No.12307975[source]▶
If the government is going to be making all the decisions there's no benefit. But I doubt we would have had Obamacare at all if he'd proposed a single-payer plan. Insurance companies, which have a lot of clout in Washington, helped push it through because they expected to make more money.

Which, quite frankly, was stupid. It was pretty clear from the outset the ACA would break the US health care system so badly single-payer is the only option going forward.

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jessaustin ◴[17 Aug 16 20:28 UTC] No.12308190[source]▶
Do you think that was as clear to the sponsors of the ACA as it was to you?
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1. gozur88 ◴[17 Aug 16 20:46 UTC] No.12308330[source]▶
If by "sponsors" you mean the political leaders, then yes. They knew they were fudging the books. They explicitly abused the GAO ten year window to make it look like there would be enough money even though the wheels were due to start coming off after seven years.

They also had enough political experience to know getting the (delayed) more unpopular parts (like cuts in payments to doctors accepting Medicare, increases to penalties for people who don't buy insurance, and extra taxes for "Cadillac plans") might be too difficult to get through when the time came. That's why they were delayed.

I suppose I can give them enough benefit of the doubt to say many of them may have believed once the system was in place they could solve the problems by closing the gap with something something.

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2. jessaustin ◴[19 Aug 16 00:14 UTC] No.12317177[source]▶
"Sponsor" is a standard term with a widely accepted meaning when discussing Congress.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sponsor_(legislative)

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3. gozur88 ◴[19 Aug 16 05:42 UTC] No.12318181[source]▶
Yes, and it's a word with other meanings as well. That's the one I thought you meant, but I wasn't sure.