Beginning of the End for Major Health Insurers

[TheKentuckian]

79. If wishes were fishes then we'd all cast our nets, Mr. Potter.

Meanwhile, this cartel written effort isn't squeezing anyone. Further, there is no actual intent to put the squeeze on, if there was then we at minimum, would not have a cartel with an anti-trust exemption as sole gate keeper to our health system.

Mr. Potter is not a young man and has the furtherance of much misery and death on his conscience that I'm sure he hopes to live to see undone at least in part and that his efforts now have also helped turn the tide but there a lot of moving parts and his hopes are the most optimistic of plausible outcomes and depend on rationalizations and epiphanies exerting significant outside force in reaction to small movements actually within the structure of the law. All of which is wishful thinking and finger crossed hope on a lot of moving parts not specifically set to the hoped for aim.

The CBO has projected out 20 years based on the law itself, and there is no death knell for the cartel, there is no flooding of the exchanges by newly freed corporate employees, there is no public plan competing at a much lower cost (hell, before the public option was killed it was hamstrung with all kinds of regulation to balance the difference it would have of not requiring profit and promotion), there is no wringing the profits out, MLR is set at where the industry reports already and is death with easily by simply increasing allowables as the need for increased profits grows.

All of these dreams may come true but as written, passed, and regulations written under the law, it isn't in the cards. Perhaps future efforts will modify the law into reality but what we have doesn't get there itself.

What we have is an effort to that sands down the worst abuses of the individual market and through a hodgepodge significantly expands coverage. Those are good things but we are far, far closer to the beginning of an effort than an end game.