One of the GOP talking point examples is how Aetna pulled out of the ACA. “See?” they say. “Aetna was unable to stay in business with the ACA forcing them to insure the poor and people with pre-existing conditions.”
Not true, says US Judge John D. Bates. Aetna pulled out of ACA states in response to a federal antitrust lawsuit blocking its proposed $37-billion merger with Humana.
[quote]
Bates found that this rationalization was largely untrue. In fact, he noted, Aetna pulled out of some states and counties that were actually profitable to make a point in its lawsuit defense — and then misled the public about its motivations. Bates’ analysis relies in part on a “smoking gun” letter to the Justice Department in which Chief Executive Mark Bertolini explicitly ties Aetna’s participation in Obamacare to the DOJ’s actions on the merger, which we reported in August. But it goes much further.
Among the locations where Aetna withdrew were 17 counties in three states where the Department of Justice asserted that the merger would produce unlawfully low levels of competition. By pulling out, Aetna could say that it wasn’t competing in those counties anyway, rendering the government’s point moot: “The evidence provides persuasive support for the conclusion that Aetna withdrew from the on-exchange markets in the 17 complaint counties to improve its litigation position,” Bates wrote. “The Court does not credit the minimal efforts of Aetna executives to claim otherwise.”
Indeed, he wrote, Aetna’s decision to pull out of the exchange business in Florida was “so far outside of normal business practice” that it perplexed the company’s top executive in Florida, who was not in the decision loop.[/quote]
I mean, I knew that the GOP were a bunch of selfish assholes, but now they literally want me to die. Awesome. Right back atcha, fellas!
The pettiness is even better at illustrating what a bunch of soulless asshairs they are. “Hearing aids for children under 18” - haha, fuck you kid, you want to hear? Get outta here!
“It allows (consumers) to buy insurance a la carte and begins to help us in Minnesota cure our health insurance regulatory disease,” Drazkowski said.
You insane fucks. In what world is letting 33-year-old Adam not buy an extra cancer rider on his insurance so that he gets crippled with medical debt forever a good thing? Shit happens. It is literally the entire point of INSURANCE, you disingenuous fuckwits.
And just because I’m feeling feisty this morning (and by feisty, I mean petty and combative), remember folks! If you voted for a Republican Congressman in the last 2-6 years, you were indirectly voting to kill (or debt-cripple) our beloved Adam! Man, that’s pretty shitty, huh?
Serious question. What if, as an act of resistance, we just stopped paying our medical bills?
Like you get a disease, rack up $500k in debt to be cured, then say fuck you I’m not paying? What if you went to the dr for a physical, then got your $100 copay bill in the mail and threw it in the garbage? What if lots of people did that? Wouldn’t that force a market correction?
You’re more or less asking a ton of people to fuck their credit for a decade, get hounded by collections agencies for months/years, and probably eventually forfeit any treatment short of legally mandated Emergency Room triage in the hopes that enough of them do so long enough to make the insurance conglomerates even blink an eye.
I mean, it’s a nice idea, but I’d say most people have a little more narrow-focused self-interest than that.
What makes you think this doesn’t already happen? In fact, what makes you think that if someone opts out of Emergency Care they won’t get it. Here is what will happen. They will get treated. They won’t have the money to pay it and everyone else in the healthcare system will pick up slack in an way that’s hard to track but hey… the GOP gets to claim they offered cheap insurance.
As for why don’t we stop paying for health care entirely… I don’t know about you, but i don’t work for free, and neither do physicians, technicians, nurses, CNAs… need i go on?
At this point I’d expect a consumer revolt- at least by the folks who have little to lose. Consumer revolts are one of the most effective tools we have right now.