Insurers warn losses from ObamaCare are unsustainable

[AFTiger 282]

Many people wrongly believe that Medicare is more efficient than private insurance; that view was often stated by champions of Obamacare during the debate preceding the law’s enactment. These advocates argued that Medicare’s administrative costs — the money it spends on expenses other than patient care — are just 3% of total costs, compared to 15% to 20% in the case of private, employer-sponsored insurance. But these figures are highly misleading, for several reasons.

Medicare is partially administered by outside agencies

First, other government agencies help administer the Medicare program. The Internal Revenue Service collects the taxes that fund the program; the Social Security Administration helps collect some of the premiums paid by beneficiaries (which are deducted from Social Security checks); the Department of Health and Human Services helps to manage accounting, auditing, and fraud issues and pays for marketing costs, building costs, and more. Private insurers obviously don’t have this kind of outside or off-budget help. Medicare’s administration is also tax-exempt, whereas insurers must pay state excise taxes on the premiums they charge; the tax is counted as an administrative cost. In addition, Medicare’s massive size leads to economies of scale that private insurers could also achieve, if not exceed, were they equally large.

Administrative costs are calculated using faulty arithmetic

But most important, because Medicare patients are older, they are substantially sicker than the average insured patient — driving up the denominator of such calculations significantly. For example: If two patients cost $30 each to manage, but the first requires $100 of health expenditures and the second, much sicker patient requires $1,000, the first patient’s insurance will have an administrative-cost ratio of 30%, but the second’s will have a ratio of only 3%. This hardly means the second patient’s insurance is more efficient — administratively, the patients are identical. Instead, the more favorable figure is produced by the second patient’s more severe illness.

Medicare has higher administrative costs per beneficiary

A more accurate measure of overhead would therefore be the administrative costs per patient, rather than per dollar of medical expenses. And by that measure, even with all the administrative advantages Medicare has over private coverage, the program’s administrative costs are actually significantly higher than those of private insurers. In 2005, for example, Robert Book has shown that private insurers spent $453 per beneficiary on administrative costs, compared to $509 for Medicare. (Indeed, Robert has written the definitive paper on this subject, from which the above figure is taken.)

http://www.forbes.co...s/#49844cfb5338

[AURaptor 1,137]

Doctors refuse Medicare and Medicaid patients now because of insufficient compensation.

No " lyin' " going on here, what so ever. To accuse anyone lf lying over flatly stated facts is itself being a liar and demagoging the issue.

Your ignorance of the issue does not constitute lying on my part.

My post was agreeing with you, and then pointing out that ICHY was himself lying.

[AFTiger 282]

It's not a right

I am still waiting on a rational explanation of why it isn't.

Even before the ACA people were not turned away who needed treatment. To insist they should have been is inhuman.

Rights are God given. Government can only impede those rights. By forcing medical labor to give away their services is a form of government imposed forced labor, sometimes called slave labor.

You have become a liar? Lyin' AF?

Please name the a countries in which doctors are enslaved.

This NHS in Great Britain grossly under pays their doctors.

[AFTiger 282]

Doctors refuse Medicare and Medicaid patients now because of insufficient compensation.

No " lyin' " going on here, what so ever. To accuse anyone lf lying over flatly stated facts is itself being a liar and demagoging the issue.

Your ignorance of the issue does not constitute lying on my part.

My post was agreeing with you, and then pointing out that ICHY was himself lying.

Sorry. I missed. I should have said ICHY's ignorance does not constitute lying on my part.

[homersapien 12,172]

Do tell. More sophistry from Forbes.

Seriously, counting periphery inputs like that is like counting the necessity of insurance company employees to purchase cars in order to commute to work.

[homersapien 12,172]

]

Actually the government is much more efficient in insuring healthcare than for-profit insurance companies are.

Right. And the welfare dollar does more to help the economy too.

<_</>

It certainly does if compared to tax cuts for the rich. That's just common sense.

[AURaptor 1,137]

Wow. You're Nancy Pelosi crazy. Can't break through that sort of mental disability. Sorry.

[AURaptor 1,137]

Do tell. More sophistry from Forbes.

Seriously, counting periphery inputs like that is like counting the necessity of insurance company employees to purchase cars in order to commute to work.

MORE sophistry ? Sure, ignore this too !

Doctor and nurse vacancies are approaching nearly 20 percent at hospitals as these facilities prepare to be inundated by millions of patients who have the ability to pay for medical care thanks to the Affordable Care Act.

A survey by health care provider staffing firm AMN Healthcare shows the vacancy rate for physicians at hospitals near 18 percent in 2013 while the nurse vacancy rate is 17 percent. That vacancy rate is more than three times what it was just four years ago when vacancies for nurses were just 5.5 percent in 2009 while vacancies for doctors were 10.7 percent.

“There is a war for talent,” Sean Gregory, president ofHealth First Holmes Regional Medical Center, a 400-bed hospital in Melbourne, Florida, said in an interview with Forbes.

The employment picture comes as the Affordable Care Act and pressures by insurance companies and employers to control costs creates a shift away from fee-for-service payment of doctors to approaches that emphasize more accountable care.

Most of these new models use primary care doctors as a quarterback of sorts to nurse practitioners and physician assistants who reach out to the patients, making sure they are taking their medications, eating properly and adhering to doctor’s orders. Nurse practitioners and physician assistants are also in short supply with hospital executives seeing a vacancy rate of 15 percent, according to the AMN Healthcare survey.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/brucejapsen/2013/12/08/doctor-nurse-vacancies-soar-amid-obamacare-rollout/#1a5213d32f9e

[homersapien 12,172]

Wow. You're Nancy Pelosi crazy. Can't break through that sort of mental disability. Sorry.

Well, let me explain by posing this question:

Assuming the need to provide an economic stimulus, which dollar is more likely to move immediately into economic circulation, the dollar a welfare recipient receives or the dollar a rich person receives?

Does that help?

In this matter, Nancy Pelosi is absolutely correct.

[homersapien 12,172]

I should mention that the website you cited didn't understand the question. They were too busy trying to spin her statement politically.

(Or maybe they are smarter than I think and were just lying and obfuscating.)

[AURaptor 1,137]

Wow. You're Nancy Pelosi crazy. Can't break through that sort of mental disability. Sorry.

Well, let me explain by posing this question:

Which dollar is more likely to move immediately into economic circulation, the dollar a welfare recipient receives or the dollar a rich person receives?

Does that help?

In this matter, Nancy Pelosi is absolutely correct.

She's 100% wrong, of course. And I have to call you out on trying to alter the discussion. First of all, it's not an ' either or ' situation. She's talking about just giving govt $ ( our money ) away. With out any regard of where that $ comes, or who else could have used it.

Also, letting money go into the free market, directly, with OUT the burden of govt overhead, will ALWAYS open up more $ to the economy. It's been proven. JFK knew it. Reagan knew it.

[homersapien 12,172]

Wow. You're Nancy Pelosi crazy. Can't break through that sort of mental disability. Sorry.

Well, let me explain by posing this question:

Which dollar is more likely to move immediately into economic circulation, the dollar a welfare recipient receives or the dollar a rich person receives?

Does that help?

In this matter, Nancy Pelosi is absolutely correct.

She's 100% wrong, of course. And I have to call you out on trying to alter the discussion. First of all, it's not an ' either or ' situation. She's talking about just giving govt $ ( our money ) away. With out any regard of where that $ comes, or who else could have used it.

Also, letting money go into the free market, directly, with OUT the burden of govt overhead, will ALWAYS open up more $ to the economy. It's been proven. JFK knew it. Reagan knew it.

No you are wrong. I am a liberal. I admire Nancy Pelosi. Who is in a better position to know what she meant?

She was referring to the effective stimulus return on government spending options. It's obvious to any thinking person.

You are either the most gullible ideological sheeple that ever existed, incredibly dumb, or you think we are.

[AURaptor 1,137]

Absolutely the latter.

[cooltigger21 0]

Government doesn't have anything that it doesn't first take from someone. Liberals think government is better suited to spend that money than the individual they took it from.

[homersapien 12,172]

Absolutely the latter.

Well you are making a fool of yourself by doing so.

[aubaseball 2,788]

Welfare dollars spent in the economy is a flea on an elephants butt compared to the taxes received from the rich.

[icanthearyou 4,468]

Absolutely the latter.

Well you are making a fool of yourself by doing so.

Has never deterred him before.

[homersapien 12,172]

Welfare dollars spent in the economy is a flea on an elephants butt compared to the taxes received from the rich.

But the question is what is the most efficient way to stimulate the economy.

[icanthearyou 4,468]

Doctors refuse Medicare and Medicaid patients now because of insufficient compensation.

No " lyin' " going on here, what so ever. To accuse anyone lf lying over flatly stated facts is itself being a liar and demagoging the issue.

Your ignorance of the issue does not constitute lying on my part.

My post was agreeing with you, and then pointing out that ICHY was himself lying.

Then why have both of you failed to name a country in which doctors are enslaved?

[quietfan 233]

For some subjects, that’s far too many. One case in point: your “right” to health care.

Among the rights guaranteed ... in our Constitution are:

Freedom of religion

Freedom of speech

The right to peaceably assemble.

The right to petition the government

The right to keep and bear arms

The right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures

Protection from double jeopardy

Due process

A speedy and public trial by jury

The right to legal counsel when charged with a crime

With one exception, the right to representation in court and a trial by jury, these rights require nothing of any other citizen but that they recognize your rights and not interfere with them.

Your “right to health care” would require some other person to give up a portion of their life or their property to either treat you or to provide you with drugs or medical implements. The Constitution does not provide for another individual to be indentured to you in this manner.

Therefore, you have no “right” to health care.

Deal with it.

Point made in only 200 words. That’s short and sweet. - Neal Boortz

I don't follow Neal Boortz, but I respect his right to his opinion. I don't know how constitutional scholars might interpret things literally, but I consider freedom of opinion a natural extension of (or precursor to) freedom of speech.

I have less respect for faulty or careless logic:

1. I'm willing to chalk up poor counting as an accident, but it seems to stretch credibility to believe he miscounted within a single sentence: "With one exception, the right to representation in court and a trial by jury, ..." He, himself, lists two exceptions in the very next phrase after claiming one exception!

2. The very fact that those two exceptions to his apparent premise (that 'rights' cannot include anything provided by others) exist proves his premise to be inaccurate. How does one logically argue "Here are two obvious exceptions to what I'm saying, but I'm still correct"?

3. Protecting any of the rights he mentions requires someone to provide the services necessary to enforce or guarantee them.

---

As for health care specifically:

In general, I've never considered health care to be a Constitutional right but rather a moral imperative, much as food, clothing, and shelter are not guaranteed by the Constitution but no moral person should be content if anyone goes hungry, naked, or homeless.

For that matter, there's nothing explicitly in the Constitution (unless one counts the Preamble goal of 'promoting the general welfare') about free public schools, government funded fire and police protection, or publicly-funded libraries (all of which are quite expensive!). But we fund those because they are good for our society. Universal health care is also good for our society, and in my opinion more of a moral imperative than schools, libraries, or fire departments.

[quietfan 233]

It is interesting that the more government gets into providing healthcare insurance the more expensive it gets.

Medical costs and insurance costs were skyrocketing long before the ACA. The fact that they continue to rise does not prove government involvement is the cause (correlation does not equal causation). We actually cannot know if or to what degree things might have been better or worse without Obamacare. The Affordable Care Act is not perfect (name me one human endeavor that is?), but it is at least an attempt to remedy the problem, where there was no serious attempt to address the problem before, nor have Republicans offered any concrete alternative for addressing the problem.

[AURaptor 1,137]

Absolutely the latter.

Well you are making a fool of yourself by doing so.

You support Pelosi!!

I win !

[icanthearyou 4,468]

Absolutely the latter.

Well you are making a fool of yourself by doing so.

You support Pelosi!!

I win !

More disingenuous stupidity. Thanks.

[TexasTiger 14,071]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/obamacare-unitedhealth-exit

[AURaptor 1,137]

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/obamacare-unitedhealth-exit

It's worse than you know.

http://dailycaller.com/2016/03/09/govt-greed-docs-hospitals-may-go-unpaid-in-co-op-flops/