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Aetna CEO Threatened Obamacare Pullout If Feds Opposed Humana Merger

(www.huffingtonpost.com)
142 points helloworld | 1 comments | 17 Aug 16 17:52 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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Apocryphon ◴[17 Aug 16 18:33 UTC] No.12307113[source]▶
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.

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rayiner ◴[17 Aug 16 18:38 UTC] No.12307162[source]▶
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.

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tptacek ◴[17 Aug 16 19:14 UTC] No.12307484[source]▶
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?
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1. rayiner ◴[18 Aug 16 05:21 UTC] No.12310555[source]▶
I think it's the least bad of a set of various bad solutions. Healthcare seems so essential that we can't let poor people go without it. And it seems like demand is totally inelastic. So maybe it's better to have no market than to have one where government is excessively entangled with insurance companies.

But I admit that I'm not super well educated on the issue.