Toobin: 'This Law Looks Like It's Going To Be Struck Down'

[TheKentuckian]

55. Perhaps but that isn't sustainable. They won't have enough subscribers to maintain or expand profits

The problems are more about no severbility clause in the law and not enough votes to re-write the offending section from penalty to tax.

Betting the house on being able to compel activity in a for profit market was always more than a little foolhardy.

The cartel must have a high participation rate and a shit ton of tax dollars, their model will collapse otherwise.

Your underlying assumption doesn't work, people's dollars are limited and shrinking. There is no unlimited money supply from the consumer to support outcome over any length of time.
If the cartel does as you estimate, it will suicide in less than twenty years. There is only so much to squeeze out and they are not the only ones that want some juice.

We may have a season where the cartel is allowed to "operate across state lines" that props it up a few years where they cut premiums by selling junk with a bunch of cost sharing out of the least regulated states but there will be more horror stories, benefits will go down, and premiums will continue to rise and the whole deal will crash as pools shrink and the profits dry up.

The profitable consumers won't participate. If mine bites too much out of my ass, I'll dump it because I like having a roof over my head, food in my belly, and lights over paying the cartel their bloodmoney for little to nothing in exchange especially when so much of my discretionary income is eaten up that I can't pay the cost sharing, I've had to do it before and I am faaaaarrrr from insurance adverse, usually opting for supplimental polices if possible but whan my premiums got near 20% of my income and the cost sharing didn't match up logically with the take home or typical costs like $65 copays on a $10 hour job.

Young, healthy people will take their chances. Many families will opt to keep a roof over their children's heads and try to get them government coverage, and for now the growing senior segment will be on Medicare.

Where will the money come from for all the big profits? Even the sickest and most afraid of being sick only have so much. This structure is flawed fundementally, it must collapse. Reform to be actual reform must provide a framework to transition from a terminal system rather than a patch that props it up essentially on the full faith and credit of the United States and a virtual draft of its people for the effort as well.

Postponing the pain will then create orders of magnitude greater and more widespread pain but punting down the road a piece takes (they estimate) their and maybe their children's generations fat out of the fire and the grandkids will hopefully have enough accumolated wealth to survive the shit hitting the fan and whatever happens after.

The Wealthcare and Profit Protection Act is a decades old effort by saner and perhaps greedier friends and members of the cartel to keep the "industry" from suicide and prevent systemic reform.

Extrapolate the numbers on the rate of growth, the numbers in the pool, the aging of the population, the income growth of the vast majority of people, and tell much which path is most likely to be profitable over a long period of time.

The contest is strictly between those in it for the long game and those you are looking at the upcoming quarter or maybe a few. The strategic versus the tactical.

Insurance must have high participation from those who need the least care, they need more money than many can pay, and probably need a way to socialize the downside and avoid being on the hook for the most expensive people unless they can work some kind of cost plus big profits deal right out of the treasury.