Aetna CEO Threatened Obamacare Pullout If Feds Opposed Humana Merger

So how can consumers respond to this corporate chicanery? In a capitalist system, the natural recourse is for citizens to turn to the private market for alternatives. Could this provide an incentive for Aetna's competitors to make it easier for Aetna's customers to switch to them?

One would assume that libertarians and free marketeers would cheer the concept of boycotts, as it is one of the mechanisms that citizens are empowered with in a laissez-faire society.

What corporate chicanery? They took a loss on exchange plans last year. They have every right to pull out of the exchanges until the government makes them stay.

I'm a supporter of single payer. But the health care market is a sterling example of the "worst of all solutions" espoused by the Democrats. Instead of simply raising everyone's taxes to pay for public services, they try to get companies to do hidden cross-subsidization, propping up money-losing individual plans with profits from group plans. And then they berate companies for pulling out of money-losing enterprises, as if providing healthcare for people who can't afford it is the job of private companies rather than the government.

You're a supporter of single payer? Health care is something like a fifth of the whole US economy. You're comfortable with the USG setting prices for it?

I don't know about single payer, but health care is tricky. What do we do (as a society) about this guy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12307526

He has his gallbladder out and all of a sudden he's a super risky person to insure. How do we get him in a risk pool where his premiums won't be unaffordable?

By shifting more of the group insurance market onto the individual market, perhaps mostly by eliminating current incentives for employer group coverage, to minimize the adverse selection problem.

Incidentally: two members of my immediate family have the same problem he does. No history of serious illness, no current health problems, probably healthier than the median in both cases for their age cohort, but uninsurable outside the exchanges due to bogus pre-existing condition rules.

1) Can we make the individual mandate in the individual market strong enough to really eliminate (or at least minimize) the adverse selection problem?

I am unconvinced that we can. Perhaps though.

2) Are you really convinced that the pre-existing rules you encountered were bogus? Are insurance companies just dumb when it comes to this sort of thing? I tend to assume, absent other evidence, that insurance companies will be profit seeking so would only turn people down if they expected to (probabilistically) lose money on the deal. Perhaps they're just not smart enough to discern differences at this level though? I don't have much experience in this area.

I think penalties need to be sharply increased, but the problem isn't so much free riders as it is that statistically the most attractive segment of the market is overwhelmingly likely to be employed at a firm that offers group coverage.

I certainly agree that employer provided health care coverage should be taxable income (I assume that's the mechanism by which you would shift people).

It's interesting to note that McCain proposed this as part of his campaign in 2004 and Obama pilloried him for it.