Remaining ObamaCare Co-Ops @ Death Spiral's Door

by JASmius



Kind of a burial at sea, at least metaphorically, isn't it?:

Eight of the eleven remaining ObamaCare health insurance co-ops appear likely to fail this year, according to an analysis of financial documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Twelve of the original twenty-three federally-financed co-ops have already collapsed. The co-op program was funded with $2.5 billion in 2010.

“In general, there’s not a turnaround in sight. The same problems that plagued them before are continuing,” Thomas P. Miller, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who previously served as the senior health economist for the congressional Joint Economic Committee, told TheDCNF.

Naturally.  Because they are, in a word, unsustainable.  A "business model" that deliberately minimizes revenue and deliberately gooses demand, and therefore costs, is not a "business model" but a "going out of business model".  It's not a "business model" at all, it's.....a government program.  Which is why everything from ObamaCare coops to "green energy companies" only survive on massive government subsidies, and if at any point the feds stop shoveling taxpayer money into their insatiable maws, they implode.



The only surprise in the case of the O-Care coops is why the White House isn't frantically pouring more cash into them.  I mean, it's not like they think they have to ask Congress to appropriate it.

Another nominal surprise is that the White House won't identify which coops are about to fold:

Although CMS officials have steadfastly refused to identify the eight “at risk” co-ops, the annual reports clearly identify those facing grave financial problems. Data shows last year all elevent co-ops lost money and the red ink also afflicted the four “healthy” co-ops that may survive. [emphasis added]

i.e. They'll go tits-up next year.

The co-ops with the most losses in 2015 were in Massachusetts, Oregon, Ohio, Connecticut, Montana, Wisconsin, Illinois and New Mexico. All eight burned through about 50% of their total assets in 2015. The assets were supposed to last for twenty years under the terms of the federal funding program. [emphasis added]

A one-to-twenty ratio.  Yeah, that works.

Maybe the feds didn't finger the most imminent failures because it was so obvious, they wanted to be spared the embarrassment of being asked for on-the-record comment.  Or, more likely, they convinced themselves six years ago that if they just stuck to the Chip Diller protocol.....



....ObamaCare would be and forever remain a fantastic success with everything going exactly as advertised.

Of course, everything IS going....as planned.