Insurers Oppose Obamacare Extension as Danger to Profits

[xchrom]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-30/insurers-oppose-obamacare-extension-as-danger-to-profits.html

Allowing Americans more time to enroll for health coverage under Obamacare may raise premiums and cut into profits, insurers are telling members of Congress in a bid to stop such a move.

Extending the enrollment period would have a “destabilizing effect on insurance markets,” said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for the Washington-based lobbyist group American’s Health Insurance Plans. Allowing younger, healthy Americans to sign up later, as they probably would, means less revenue for insurers counting on those premiums to help defray the cost of sicker customers, threatening industry profits.

“If you can enroll at any point in the year, then you can just wait until you get sick,” Brian Wright, an analyst with Monness Crespi Hardt in New York, said in a telephone interview. “This isn’t the industry crying foul and exaggerating the issue, this is actually one of those issues where there is a well-grounded reason for the concerns.”

It’s a message the industry is taking to Congress after Republicans there, along with at least 10 Democrats, have suggested enrollment be extended beyond its current March 31 deadline because of issues with healthcare.gov, the federal health insurance website that’s been plagued by software miscues.

[liberal N proud]

1. And there you have it - Good ol' American GREED

Which is why they designed the ACA the way they did!

Single payer would have solved all of this, but we got ACA so we need to make it work for everyone!

[iemitsu]

2. This is the problem with for profit health insurance,

the profit is more important than the people.
We need a single payer plan that provides the same coverage (with no out of pocket fees) for all Americans, from cradle to grave.

[Hoyt]

4. It would be nice, but we can't even pull the ACA off at substantially less cost, and even Medicare

can't do it without substantial cost-sharing from beneficiaries. Maybe some day.

[muntrv]

3. My supervisor is saying he knows of someone who

says his premiums went up 48%. I asked him where this person works and he said Charter Bank, though he hasn't seen him in 6 months. My supervisor said it was a facebook post, so I take that with a grain of salt.

He brought this up because our employer is having open enrollment in a month and thinks our premiums are going up. He thinks it is because of ACA. Any truth to that?