(M)an: Dude! The Affordable Care Act or Obamacare is not being broadcast fairly anywhere on television and radio. Aetna has withdrawn from providing coverage through Obamacare and the American Press Corps is blaming the Obama Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services for premium hikes in the entire medical insurance business. Obviously, this divisiveness that the American Press Corps constructs between everyday working poor people and probably the most transformative Executive Branch since the Clinton Administration’s achieving an economic surplus that was drained by the subsequent Republican Administration of George Walker Bush and Dick Cheney, is a throwback to the days of the cruel press corps during the Reagan Era who constructed the stereotype of the welfare queen.
(D)ude: Man! I found some articles that place the blame of the premium hikes upon the providers, like Aetna, themselves. According to today’s online article by Maggie Fox on nbcnews.com entitled Obamacare premiums are going up. What does that really mean?
Health officials and other experts pointed out that most Americans do not get their health insurance on the Obamacare exchanges. Not only that: health care costs have been going up for years — that's why health reform started in the first place.
More than 60 percent of Americans get health insurance through an employer. Another 16 percent use Medicare or Medicaid and 9 percent are covered by individual insurance plans — including Obamacare. Another 2 percent are covered by military plans such as Tricare or the Veterans' Administration.
M: Dude! But how specifically are providers like Aetna responsible for the premium hikes?
D: Man! According to Maggie Fox’s above-mentioned article,
What any health insurance company wants to do is get more healthy people paying premiums, so they can subsidize the relatively small percentage of people with high medical costs.
Pearson and other experts say they can do this by subsidizing people with higher incomes. "A future administration needs to figure out how to restructure the premiums and coverage to make it attractive to a medium-income person," she said.
M: Dude! But, again, how specifically are providers like Aetna responsible for the premium hikes?
D: Man! For an answer to that question, let me refer to National Public Radio’s Alison Kodjak’s online article from August 16, 2016,
Most insurers selling plans through the exchanges have been losing money because the people getting insurance under Obamacare have been sicker than forecast.
But Aetna, which lost $430 million on the Obamacare plans in the first half of the year, said it may re-enter the markets in the future.
"We will continue to evaluate our participation in individual public exchanges while gaining additional insight from the counties where we will maintain our presence, and may expand our footprint in the future should there be meaningful exchange-related policy improvements,” CEO Mark Bertolini said in a statement.
Aetna, which covers about 900,000 people through the exchanges, is the third major insurer to pull back from the Obamacare marketplaces. UnitedHealth Group said in April it planned to pull out of ACA marketplaces in most states, and just last month Humana, which covers about 800,000 people, said it will cut back its offerings to just a handful of counties.
All the companies said they are losing money on the plans. The Department of Health and Human Services has argued that companies have themselves to blame because they set premiums too low. The companies will be able to adjust the premiums in the future.
"Aetna's decision to alter its Marketplace participation does not change the fundamental fact that the Health Insurance Marketplace will continue to bring quality coverage to millions of Americans next year and every year after that,” Kevin Counihan, CEO of HealthCare.gov, the federal insurance exchange.
In all, about 11 million people have bought insurance through the exchanges.
A spokesman for HHS said Aetna's decision was an about-face from its earlier statements about the Obamacare exchanges.
In April, Bertolini called the marketplace plans "a good investment" because it would have cost the company far more than $430 million to try to attract that many customers.
"If we were to build out 15 markets, it would cost us somewhere between $600 million to $750 million to enter those markets and build out the capabilities necessary to grow that membership," he said on the company's April earnings conference call with analysts.
Aetna's announcement comes less than a month after the Justice Department sued to stop the company's planned merger with Humana, arguing that the combination would hurt competition.
At the same time, the government also sued to block Anthem from purchasing Cigna.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, suggested Aetna's change of heart was in response to the Justice Department's action. In a post on her Facebook page last week, Warren questioned the company's motives after it first hinted that it was considering cutting its participation in Obamacare.
"The health of the American people should not be used as a bargaining chip to force the government to bend to one giant company's will," she said.
Aetna spokesman T.J. Crawford didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on Warren's statement.
M: Dude! Who is in charge of the decision-making processes at Aetna besides its CEO Mark Bertolini? Doesn’t Aetna Inc. have a political action committee or PAC? What’s the PAC’s role in America’s political process?
D: Man! According to the Center for Responsive Politics’ online portal opensecrets.org, the Aetna Inc Political Action Committee or Aetna Inc PAC has made $563,000 worth of contributions to federal candidates, meaning members of the United States Congress, both the House of Representatives and Senate. However, only 33% of the $563,000 was allotted to Democrats while 67% of the $563,000 was allotted to Republicans, clearly indicating a political bias favoring the GOP over the Democratic Party.
M: Dude! Who is in charge at the Aetna Inc PAC?
D: Man! The treasurer of the Aetna Inc PAC is listed online as James R. Ricciuti. He is a Republican operative from the years of the Reagan Administration and George Herbert Walker Bush. From 1982 to 1988, Ricciuti, according to linkedin.com, was a budget examiner at the United States Office of Management and Budget, a role in which Ricciuti claims he reviewed and made policy recommendations on federal government budget and legislation for education, job training, and health care programs. Then, from 1988 to 1990, Ricciuti took on the position of a senior staff member in the United States Senate’s Committees on Finance and Budget, describing his role as handling budget and legislation for health care, social security, child care and nutrition programs.
M: Dude! Where does James R. Ricciuti reside nowadays? What does he do? Is there a female equivalent to him at the Aetna Inc PAC?
D: Man! Riccuti conveniently resides in Washington, DC nowadays and describes himself as a health care executive at Aetna. A female equivalent to him would be Susan Stoner Zook, the Senior Director of Government Affairs at Aetna since April 2015.
M: Dude! Is she from the Reagan Administration or George Herbert Walker years too?
D: Man! No. Susan Stoner Zook was a Legislative Correspondent for Republican Congressman Tim Murphy from January 2003 to August 2004 and a Legislative Assistant for the Office of Republican Senator Mike Crapo from February 2011 to August 2013.
M: Dude! What states do the Republican Congressman Murphy and Republican Senator Crapo represent?
D: Man! Republican Congressman Timothy F. Murphy represents Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district and has been in the position since 2003. Republican Senator Michael Dean Crapo has been the senior senator from Idaho since 1998.
M: Dude! Come to think of it, it is not blue collars or the working poor in Pennsylvania that are resisting the Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine ticket. It is the downright lies of the American Press Corps alongside white collar criminals with a Republican trickle down bias like Aetna’s James R. Ricciuti and Susan Stoner Zook who are indulging in dark money via PACs like Aetna Inc’s in states like Pennsylvania post 2010’s Citizen’s United decision by the John Roberts Supreme Court that flooded American politics with an unaccounted for cashflow. My nieces and nephews asked whether the United States of America could crumble into a third world country. I told them yes, if Donald Trump and the Republican Party were to take over the White House and reclaim Majority Party status in both houses of the United States Congress this election cycle.
D: Man! Corrupt people are a burden on the working poor like us! The lack of universal medical insurance for so long in United States history brought us to the truth about just how sick we really are. I was recently diagnosed with glaucoma and you finally got the chance to get dental braces in order to relieve the soreness in your gums due to overcrowding of the teeth. Unfortunately, in my case, there will be no relief from the constant threat of losing my peripheral vision because the eye doctor informed me that there are no eye drops on the market to help assist with easing the deterioration from glaucoma.
M: Dude! What about the doctor prescribing the eye drops—that they administer when you do develop the changes in your peripheral vision—beforehand?
D: Man! I made that argument to the eye specialist and she recommended I get my eyes checked every three months in order to guarantee prompt intervention if my eyesight begins to deteriorate. It is frustrating. You’d think there was a far better answer in the 21st century.
M: Dude! I think the insurance companies are to blame for such frustrations. Your eye specialist could probably be dropped from the insurance plan altogether if she were to administer medicine for the purposes of preventing the onslaught of future medical crises.
D: Man! It is frustrating. You’ve got these bigshots on Wall Street aiming for the personal wealth that mirrors Anthony Hopkins’ billionaire lifestyle in the 1998 film Meet Joe Black. Remember how Brad Pitt is given a tour of that estate? I certainly do not think a helicopter pad and an indoor Olympic-size swimming pool are necessary to personal fulfillment.
M: Dude! I believe the objectification of women and girls derives from that unnecessary overstock of material wealth. Don’t you?
(TO BE CONTINUED…)
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