Obamacare Update

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Originally posted by: pjstroh

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Originally posted by: alanleroyII

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Originally posted by: pjstroh
But they lost money on a subset of their customers that were sick. They don't want anything to do with those people. Its nice that they value profits over patients, isn't it?

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Luckily for PJ he has the option of avoiding these greedy bastard capitalists and spending his health insurance dollars with his local Health insurance Cooperative. He will then have tremendous service from a group of likeminded citizens who banded together to create insurance plans focused on patients and not profits.

Why 5 New Nonprofit Health Insurance Cooperatives failed.

400000 to lose coverage due to Healthcare Cooperative failures

Cascading Co-op failures

If the problem is really For Profit Insurance companies, why are all these non profit Co-ops failing after taking millions of taxpayer loans and grants? It seems like they should be thriving since they don't have shareholders breathing down their necks demanding quarterly profits.

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Who says profits are the problem? I say crybabies are the problem.

The bottom line is undisputable. Collectively the health insurance market is not only profitable - but those profits continue to grow. Yet we hear lots of crying from Health Insurance companies and Obama bashers about struggling profits which is based upon a subset of the collective data - that subset being sick people on the individual market exchanges.

I'm not shedding any tears for struggling United Health's 20% profit rise this year, Alan. But feel free to join DonDiego in the narrative that Obamacare has really stuck it to the private insurers somehow. The only outrage would be allowing these companies to opt out of covering sick people.

I would change the ACA to only grant Medicare Advantage subsidies to insurers that also participate in the individual exchanges. That might make United Health's profits only rise 15% but it would be more beneficial to the public. You can determine which side of that equation is more important.

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Originally posted by: billryan
I've always found you can judge an industry by examining how the stock of its major companies. A three minute search seems to indicate the industry is doing just fine.

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Originally posted by: billryan
UNHs stock has gone from being in the low 50s in 2011 to $130 today. Seems like somebody isn't worried about it going bankrupt.
It's profiting at a rate of 1.5 billion dollars a quarter, and has margins twice that of General Electric.
I wish all my stocks did as well.

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Originally posted by: billryan
So the rise in the price from 50 in 2011 to 125 before they made that announcement was all done based on them walking away in the future? Seriously?

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Originally posted by: Boilerman
Stock prices are not based on past performance, but instead on performance expectations for the future. This company is shedding a piece of business which "the market" expected to continue losing money.

I'm not saying that all of the stock price escalation is due to the company's decision to walk from Obamacare, but the market likes the move, and subsequently bid up the price.

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Originally posted by: billryan
UNHs stock has gone from being in the low 50s in 2011 to $130 today. Seems like somebody isn't worried about it going bankrupt.
It's profiting at a rate of 1.5 billion dollars a quarter, and has margins twice that of General Electric.
I wish all my stocks did as well.

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