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 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
And now you're making a strawman of what I said. I pointed out that Obama said "you can keep", not "you'll be able to keep" and that you should be more thorough when you quote people. At no point have I defended the statement.

O.o

First of all, in my initial response I didn't quote... a paraphrased. Hence why I didn't quote it initially.

So, why are you hung up on "you can keep" vs "you'll be able to keep"? They're functionally the same.

And yes, you changed the subject. The fact that you're attacking Obama for unrelated statements in a thread about Aetna ought to illustrate that abundantly.

Because PPACA is a gak law. That is a fact.

Aetna dropping out because they couldn't make money is because of this gakky law... EVEN within a captive market.

dogma was just being his usual pedantic-self, so... why are you so defensive?

The fact that people aren't enrolling is a pretty good argument against it being a captive market.

 d-usa wrote:
The fact that people aren't enrolling is a pretty good argument against it being a captive market.

Right... just pay the fine for not having insurance.

So if you know they are not a captive audience, then why claim that they are one?

Lying, ignorance, repeating talking points?

 d-usa wrote:
So if you know they are not a captive audience, then why claim that they are one?

Lying, ignorance, repeating talking points?

Huh? Are we talking past each other??
Captive market

Captive markets are markets where the potential consumers face a severely limited number of competitive suppliers; their only choices are to purchase what is available or to make no purchase at all. Captive markets result in higher prices and less diversity for consumers...

Seems to fit the description... no?

I have to admit, I am really confused why so many insurance companies are trying to drop out of Obamacare considering they practically wrote the darn thing.

It just gets us one step closer to single-payer, and do Insurance providers really want that?

 Easy E wrote:
I have to admit, I am really confused why so many insurance companies are trying to drop out of Obamacare considering they practically wrote the darn thing.

It just gets us one step closer to single-payer, and do Insurance providers really want that?

It's big pharma that's generally accused of writing the ACA. The whole thing was kind of a losing deal for insurance companies from the beginning.

 LordofHats wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
I have to admit, I am really confused why so many insurance companies are trying to drop out of Obamacare considering they practically wrote the darn thing.

It just gets us one step closer to single-payer, and do Insurance providers really want that?

It's big pharma that's generally accused of writing the ACA. The whole thing was kind of a losing deal for insurance companies from the beginning.

This and the generic healthcare lobbying groups (AMA, etc...).

I do believe I mention on the original ACA thread that Romneycare was geared for that specific state and aimed at a certain percentage or some such. Total Goat Rope

 whembly wrote:
Because PPACA is a gak law. That is a fact.

Aetna dropping out because they couldn't make money is because of this gakky law... EVEN within a captive market.

I know you don't like Obama, Clinton, ACA or any other kind of blue coloured politics, and you want to believe anything bad about any of those things. I get that, it's part of the whembly experience here on dakka. But look what you've done in this case - you were so happy to believe something bad about ACA that you took a press release from a corporate insurer at face value. People who are paid to lie for a living said something, and you believed it because that let you confirm something you wanted to believe about ACA. That right there should be the wake up call to make you reconsider how you go about thinking about politics.

I'm sure right now you probably want to argue that Aetna did lose hundreds of millions so this time they're actually telling the truth. And while it is true that Aetna lost hundreds of millions, that's because it's a new market. Expanding in to a single new market can cost a fortune in research, product and provider development, and then once you've got your product you have to spend big on marketing and price discounting to get your piece of the market share. Expanding in to fifteen new markets as Aetna did will cost a small fortune. Here's Aetna's CEO back in April of this year explaining how it works;

“We have 911,000 members on the public exchange as individual. We have 1.2 million members that are exchange or ACA-compliant. If we were to go out and buy those members, it would cost us somewhere around $1.2 billion to acquire them. If we were to build out 15 markets, it would cost us somewhere between $600 million to $750 million to enter those markets and build out the capabilities necessary to grow that membership. So in the broad scheme of things, we are well, well below any of those numbers from the standpoint of losses we've incurred in the first two-and-a-half years of this program. So we see this as a good investment…”

It was a good investment in April. In July the DoJ rejected the proposed merger of Anthem and Aetna. Then in August the expansion in to those markets suddenly becomes a terrible investment.

And you believed them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Easy E wrote:
I have to admit, I am really confused why so many insurance companies are trying to drop out of Obamacare considering they practically wrote the darn thing.

That's only a puzzle as long as you fail to reconsider the assumption that ACA was written by the insurers. As Lord of Hats mentioned, it was the pharmaceutical companies that played along with ACA and got a lot for themselves included in the bill. Not so much as they got out of GW Bush's $7 trillion drug benefit scheme, but they still did rather nicely.

The private insurers, on the other hand, made a decision to fight ACA every step of the way. They made this decision because while becoming part of the process would have given them a bill better suited to their interests and profits, it was never going to be a good bill for private insurers. This is because the core of ACA is about removing the right of insurers to deny someone coverage. Private insurers were never going to get a bill that increased their profits when they could no longer deny coverage.

So the insurers made a strategic decision, instead of being part of the process and trying to minimise the harm to their profits, they backed the effort to tank the bill.

 sebster wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Because PPACA is a gak law. That is a fact.

Aetna dropping out because they couldn't make money is because of this gakky law... EVEN within a captive market.

I know you don't like Obama, Clinton, ACA or any other kind of blue coloured politics, and you want to believe anything bad about any of those things. I get that, it's part of the whembly experience here on dakka. But look what you've done in this case - you were so happy to believe something bad about ACA that you took a press release from a corporate insurer at face value. People who are paid to lie for a living said something, and you believed it because that let you confirm something you wanted to believe about ACA. That right there should be the wake up call to make you reconsider how you go about thinking about politics.

I'm sure right now you probably want to argue that Aetna did lose hundreds of millions so this time they're actually telling the truth. And while it is true that Aetna lost hundreds of millions, that's because it's a new market. Expanding in to a single new market can cost a fortune in research, product and provider development, and then once you've got your product you have to spend big on marketing and price discounting to get your piece of the market share. Expanding in to fifteen new markets as Aetna did will cost a small fortune. Here's Aetna's CEO back in April of this year explaining how it works;

“We have 911,000 members on the public exchange as individual. We have 1.2 million members that are exchange or ACA-compliant. If we were to go out and buy those members, it would cost us somewhere around $1.2 billion to acquire them. If we were to build out 15 markets, it would cost us somewhere between $600 million to $750 million to enter those markets and build out the capabilities necessary to grow that membership. So in the broad scheme of things, we are well, well below any of those numbers from the standpoint of losses we've incurred in the first two-and-a-half years of this program. So we see this as a good investment…”

It was a good investment in April. In July the DoJ rejected the proposed merger of Anthem and Aetna. Then in August the expansion in to those markets suddenly becomes a terrible investment.

And you believed them.

If there were money to be made, Aetna would've stayed in Seb. I can't believe I have to tell you that...

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Easy E wrote:
I have to admit, I am really confused why so many insurance companies are trying to drop out of Obamacare considering they practically wrote the darn thing.

That's only a puzzle as long as you fail to reconsider the assumption that ACA was written by the insurers. As Lord of Hats mentioned, it was the pharmaceutical companies that played along with ACA and got a lot for themselves included in the bill. Not so much as they got out of GW Bush's $7 trillion drug benefit scheme, but they still did rather nicely.

The private insurers, on the other hand, made a decision to fight ACA every step of the way. They made this decision because while becoming part of the process would have given them a bill better suited to their interests and profits, it was never going to be a good bill for private insurers. This is because the core of ACA is about removing the right of insurers to deny someone coverage. Private insurers were never going to get a bill that increased their profits when they could no longer deny coverage.

So the insurers made a strategic decision, instead of being part of the process and trying to minimise the harm to their profits, they backed the effort to tank the bill.

When the business environment becomes more gakky because of the ACA/increased regulation, of course they're going to object to this law.

Again... if there were money to be made, these insurers would've stayed in and played ball.

 whembly wrote:
If there were money to be made, Aetna would've stayed in Seb. I can't believe I have to tell you that...

Except there is money to be made, and Aetna was happy to make a loss in the short term to make lots of money in the long term. Again, here's the Aetna CEO in April of this year;
"So in the broad scheme of things, we are well, well below any of those numbers from the standpoint of losses we've incurred in the first two-and-a-half years of this program. So we see this as a good investment…”

And then the DoJ ruling came down and suddenly Aetna changes its mind and it isn't a good investment. You believed it when they first told the lie, and now you're still believing even though you've been shown it's an obvious lie.

Aetna is also only pulling out of 11 states, but are more than happy to stick with the other states because it is those 11 states where they are losing money.

I wonder if those 11 states also chose to expand medicaid or were exchange delayers/deniers? That could also help explain why they are sub-optimal. i seem to recall reading that many of these 11 states were in the source, but can't source it at the moment.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 LordofHats wrote:

 Easy E wrote:
I have to admit, I am really confused why so many insurance companies are trying to drop out of Obamacare considering they practically wrote the darn thing.

It just gets us one step closer to single-payer, and do Insurance providers really want that?

It's big pharma that's generally accused of writing the ACA. The whole thing was kind of a losing deal for insurance companies from the beginning.

Thanks for the clarification Team.