If it's "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice shame on me," and "once is fluke, twice is a coincidence, thrice is a trend," what's the axiom when you reach the fourth step? Or, in this case, year?:
Consumers who signed up for Blue Cross Blue Shield health plans through the [Una]ffordable Care Act’s insurance [cartel]s these last two years tended to be sicker and incurred greater medical costs than people with BCBS coverage through their jobs.
The enrollees in those individual health plans in 2014 and 2015 had higher rates of diabetes, depression and heart disease, according to a report released Wednesday by the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association.
Medical costs for individuals who obtained coverage through the [U]CA’s insurance [cartel]s were, on average, 22% higher than those with employer-based coverage in 2015, according to the association. Average monthly medical spending per member was $559 for individual enrollees in 2015, for example, versus $457 for group members.
The opposite side of the coin from the economic incentives for young, healthy Americans to pay the much cheaper "tax" versus signing up for way more expensive O-Care approved comprehensive plans that are vastly more coverage than they need or want. So the Americans who were supposed to be syphoned to pay for that corresponding avalanche of old, sick enrollees, whose economic incentive is to enroll for maximum coverage when they most need it (i.e. when it's most costly) because, of course, it's "free". Those two respective economic incentives are incompatible with fiscal sustainability. And that is by design.
Consequently, there are only two possible ultimate outcomes in what's left of the individual health insurance market: it's total laying waste through either the bankrupting of insurance carriers or their withdrawal, or continuing spiraling premiums and deductibles (remember when those two things were inversely related?). And those aren't two opposing outcomes, but rather the latter is the means to the inevitability of the former.
And remember, folks, that the individual market demolition is the small fry prelude to the main event: The long-(illegally) delayed taking effect of the Employer Mandate, which will disrupt and engulf in the same destructive chaos the employer-provided group health insurance market. And the fast track to the final health care crisis and the fait accompli of single-payer will have begun.
The wages, again, of Barack Obama's reelection, and tighy-righties deciding that Mitt Romney wasn't "conservative enough" for them, which is being reinforced by the rise of Trumpmania and its planned demolition of the Republican Party.
They say elections have consequences; it seems we are incapable of voting wisely enough to provide any but disastrous ones, and evidently never will again.
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