Obamacare...The Good..Bad and the Ugly

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AETNA CEO DECLARES: OBAMACARE IN A “DEATH SPIRAL”
FEBRUARY 20, 2017

Things are bad and are getting worse. There is no doubt that ObamaCare has failed – and, who didn’t know that was coming? But, Trump and the GOP have inherited a big mess. Repeal in unquestionable. But, how to replace? Time is running out.

The New American reports – The chief executive officer of health-insurance giant Aetna Inc. has publicly declared ObamaCare to be in a “death spiral” and said he expects a significant exodus of insurers from the Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchanges next year.

Speaking at the Wall Street Journal’s Future of Healthcare event Wednesday, Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini (shown) said, “There isn’t enough money in the ACA today as it is structured, even with its fees and taxes, to support the population that needs to be served.” That population consists of the sickest Americans, those with costly chronic conditions. “Our top one percent to five percent of our members … are driving 50 percent of our overall cost structure,” Bertolini claimed.

Since, under ObamaCare, Aetna is forced to cover those individuals at below-market rates, it needs a large pool of healthy plan members to offset the cost. “You know that mathematics education in the United States is working,” said Bertolini, when people can figure out that it’s in their best interest to forgo health insurance, even with the ACA’s individual-mandate penalty and subsidies, because their premiums and deductibles are so high as to make insurance a decidedly losing proposition. The average deductible for individual insurance nationwide is currently $3,600, an increase of 15 percent from last year, he said.

What happens when healthy people, who have low claims costs, decide to do without insurance? “The risk inside the pool keeps getting worse, the rates continue to chase it, and then the participants” — both healthy people and insurers — “start to leave,” Bertolini explained. Thus, he concluded, ObamaCare “is in a death spiral.”

http://minutemennews.com/aetna-ceo-declares-obamacare-death-spiral/