This odd belief system that the republicans are responsible for the ACA clusterfuck.

[TheKentuckian]

182. That they are locked at where they were reporting and that the lock, if it does anything

which it shouldn't based on reporting, would be to create an incentive for the cartel to pay more of allowable charges.

The real benefit of the MLR is much more subtle than the popular selling points. The real benefit is by definition it forced some reckoning on what actually constitute medical expenses because one had to be had to know which was 20 and which is 80. That is important and will have some containment benefit on its own though it will be at the margins rather than the big driver of cost containment some make out and almost certainly not crippling the ability of the cartel to make big, big money leading to the for profits all just folding their tents because there is no money to be made (a lie told by those that don't grasp typical margins to folks that have the same hole in understanding).

Actually, I'm not seeing how profits don't increase. That 20% becomes very close to a guaranteed pot, if the 80% intrudes on it we have an easily justified increase and more and more of that 20% can go to profits rather than commissions to agents (probably going extinct because who needs them?), the pat of those who support them, underwriting, probably lots of the customer service force, much of the advertising budget becomes worthless, marketing departments will shrink.
The cartel is being modernized in such a way that it will likely see massive shrinkage in personnel cost. That is another subtle benefit, if down the line somebody really comes after the cartel they will have significantly less jobs to hold as a hostage.

I'm still convinced that this isn't the reform we were looking for but it does maybe push and nibble in ways that might set the table for a more direct successor effort, at least in some important ways.