SI
SI
discoversearch

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor.  We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community.  If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.
Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Alighieri who wrote (833669)2/1/2015 1:35:10 PM
From: i-node  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1578552
 
>> What makes you say that they will go under?

Looking at the exchanges overall, going into the first year we were told it was "essential" for the exchange plans to capture 40% "young, healthy" people. And if that didn't happen these programs would not be sustainable. As I pointed out in a post to CJ the other day, you cannot fix a bad cohort with more of them.

At the end of the first enrollment period, that percentage was 25%, which guarantees that rates have to go up substantially. Thus far, during the second open enrollment, that figure is reported as having dropped to 24%, a move in entirely the wrong direction. If, at the close of open enrollment, we are still seeing the anemic gross enrollment numbers as well as the inordinately low mix of young people, these programs will be broke very, very quickly after the 3-year period during when they can receive kickbacks ends.

And this is occurring with MASSIVE subsidies by the taxpayers which Steven Brill -- a supporter of ACA -- has said, "There is no way in hell we're going to pay for it!" Which is what other informed people have been saying since its inception.

And you guys never quite seem to address it. Money? WTF? It doesn't matter. We can borrow more.



To: Alighieri who wrote (833669)2/12/2015 3:53:06 PM
From: THE WATSONYOUTH1 Recommendation

Recommended By
locogringo

  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1578552
 
What makes you say that they will go under?

......how about common sense from
a long life experience

ObamaCare Co-Ops Headed Toward $2.5 Billion Meltdown 25 Comments

02/11/2015 06:36 PM ET


Crony Socialism: Among ObamaCare's many bad ideas was the attempt to create an entirely new industry of nonprofit insurance co-ops. It is fast turning into a huge, multibillion-dollar taxpayer boondoggle.

Created as an alternative to an outright "public option," the co-ops have received $2.5 billion in low-interest loans to help them get started.

Only about 500,000 enrolled in one of the 23 co-ops that ObamaCare spawned, which works out to $17,000 per enrollee, according to an analysis by the Daily Signal, a news site started by the Heritage Foundation.

The loans were supposed to provide the co-ops a years-long cushion to get their premiums right. But even with all this help, one of them — CoOportunity Health — is already insolvent, forcing its roughly 68,000 enrollees in Iowa and Nebraska to switch to other plans.

Just months before it went belly-up, CoOportunity was being hailed "as one of the most successful of the 23 such health-insurance co-ops organized nationally," according to the Des Moines Register.

The Community Health Alliance in Tennessee froze enrollment this January after posting an $8.5 million loss in the first nine months of last year.

These are likely to be the first of many such financial problems. A Standard & Poor's report out this week found that all but five of the co-ops had negative cash flow through Sept. 30, and 11 had bigger loss ratios than CoOportunity.

S&P also found that "medical loss ratios" — the percentage of premiums that go to pay medical claims — were "hopelessly high" for several co-ops, a sign they enrolled too many high-cost patients.

An earlier report from insurance rating firm A.M. Best also found trouble brewing. All but one co-op had operating losses through last September that totaled nearly $244 million. That led A.M. Best to say it "is concerned about the financial viability of these plans."

Now the co-ops are in Washington, "pushing federal officials to make it easier for the nascent plans to get significant private funding to stay solvent," according to Politico Pro.

Among the sticking points is whether the government will go to the back of the line when it comes to collecting on those debts.

Washington needs to pull the plug on this dubious experiment, not waste still more money to keep it on life support.




Read More At Investor's Business Daily: news.investors.com
Follow us: @IBDinvestors on Twitter | InvestorsBusinessDaily on Facebook