A Step to Force Medicare Advantage Insurers into Bankruptcy

The 11 million seniors on Medicare Advantage plans administered by private health insurance companies are about to be given new premium and co-pay rates.  Despite medical care costs going up 6% this year, the Obama administration sent letters to Well-Point Inc., Cigna Corp., BlueCross BlueShield Association, and Health Care Service Corp. that they must not increase their premiums and co-pays this year, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal on 7 June 2010.  This is part of the Obama effort to minimize citizen anger at the ObamaCare bill.  These insurers and others had planned to cut back on services offered and to increase payments required.  The bill itself requires government payments to be cut by $136 billion by the end of the decade, but those cuts do not begin until 2012.  The present cost freeze implied by the Kathleen Sibelius letter was not in the bill.

It is appropriate for the government to determine how much of the costs of Medicare Advantage it will pay.  At least it would be if the government had any business being in this business at all.  It is not right for the government to mandate what the costs of such plans offered by private insurers will be or can be, however.  The insurance industry estimates the insurance payment cuts on Medicare Advantage over ten years will be about $200 billion.  They do not see any way to offer these plans without cutting the services offered or raising the payments charged to the Medicare Advantage customers.

The Obama thugs are also planning to announce $250 million in grants to the states to fund their toughening insurance premium regulations.  The grip of state and federal government on our health care insurance industry is tightening.  The plan is to make it impossible for private insurers to make money in the health insurance market, just as the plan is to bankrupt all coal-fired electric power plants.  When insurers have stopped offering health insurance or have gone bankrupt, the socialists will institute the tyrannical plan they have always wanted: a single-payer plan, that is, a government payer plan, that is a taxpayer massive redistribution of income plan.