Coronavirus drives health insurers back to Obamacare

[RandySF]

Health insurers fled the Affordable Care Act in the early years of the law, fearing that losses from covering too many sick people would eat away at their profits.

Now the insurers increasingly view Obamacare as a boon while job-based health coverage faces its biggest threat yet in a crashing economy.

With tens of millions of people losing their jobs — and their health benefits — along with major cuts to Medicaid, the insurers see stability and the promise of enough healthy enrollees in a marketplace that offers government subsidized private insurance to millions of Americans during a pandemic.United Healthcare, the nation’s biggest insurer, on Tuesday said it’s re-entering Maryland’s Obamacare market and planning other expansions after abandoning 34 states’ ACA exchanges since 2016. Anthem and Cigna have also made incremental moves over the past two years.

A just-released study from the Kaiser Family Foundation found insurers serving Obamacare patients saw continued profits last year, and that there were no signs that the elimination of the law’s individual mandate, which took effect in 2019, led to a widespread exodus of healthy customers.


https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/14/coronavirus-health-insurers-obamacare-257099

[Hermit-The-Prog]

1. Tying health care to employment provides another whip for employers.

[BComplex]

2. And everyone was so critical about medicare for all, when this shows that

it's the most desirable way to keep people from the mess they're in now. All that crap about "they're in love with their health insurance they have with their employers" has somehow disappeared all of a sudden.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

3. "Full benefits" should be for every person; not negotiated as part payment for a job.