Obamacare and the Insurance Companies

In the same manner that large Wall Street banks wrote the so-called “Wall Street Reform”–which plainly was intended to strengthen and make more secure large banks, at the expense of small banks and the taxpayer–large insurance companies from what I can tell in large measure supported Obamacare.

I have long wondered about this.  It seems clear to me and most that Obamacare is intended to put them out of business.  Certainly, some of them, like United Healthcare, the biggest insurer, may be counting on taking over most of the market, then getting contracted by the government to provide ALL services in a single payer-like scenario.  Or maybe the top five.

Certainly in terms of enrollees they are only picking up between them perhaps 10% of the overall market, and Obamacare puts caps on how much profit they can make relative to revenues.

What now occurs to me is that at least for the next five years–and most CEO’s of large corporations seem unable to think beyond that time window–most Americans will be required by law to buy health insurance policies of a grade and price beyond what they were buying, and those who are unable to buy them will now get subsidies from the government to pay for their insurance, which means that even the poor will be picking up expensive policies.

This means that net revenues overall will increase a LOT.  Not only are they bringing new people on, but they are able to force people, by law, to buy policies that are more expensive than they otherwise would have chosen.

When these insurance companies are sending out cancellation notices, they are thrilled.  Most normal middle class Americans will take the hit and pay the higher rate.  They are forcing people into more expensive and more profitable policies.  They may be constrained in profit percentages, but overall revenues will increase enormously; and in any event I don’t think what is being forced on them is all that different than their historical norms, and certainly more than they would expect to see in an actually competitive market, where all carriers could sell all products in all States. I think most big insurance carriers have considered a 5% net profit an extremely good year for some time.

So the CEO’s of Wellpoint, and United, and Humana and the others may have just said “fuck it.  Who knows what the future holds?  We can sure as hell make hay now.”

Certainly, I am in a position to know that these companies have been expanding steadily for two years or more.  Now it makes more sense to me.

Again, if a leftist is talking, he or she is lying.  Here, they claimed to be socking it to the insurance companies.  And they may yet–to our collective detriment–but not until after a lot of us get fleeced, and a lot of executives get richer.