Extinction



Courtesy of Wikipedia

Photographer: ScottRobertAnselmo

"Close up of "Sue" T-Rex replica skull at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, IL. [...]Tyrannosaurus rex was one of the largest land carnivores of all time."

Il arrive au meilleur de nous, n'est pas?  In an article titled, Aetna CEO: Health Insurers Face Extinction, Health Data Management reports,

It’s not often that you hear the leader of a Fortune 100 company publicly acknowledge the imminent demise of his venerable, profitable business model.

Yet, speaking at the HIMSS12 Conference in Las Vegas, Aetna CEO, Chairman and President Mark Bertolini, said a reckoning for the traditional health insurance model was at hand. “The system doesn’t work, it’s broke today” Bertolini told attendees. “The end of insurance companies, the way we’ve run the business in the past, is here.”

Bertolini said an amalgamation of regulatory, demographic and economic factors were driving this change. The Affordable Care Act in particular, with its ban on medical underwriting, has made the traditional health insurance business model untenable in the long term, he said. Nonetheless, he offered measured praise for the law, even citing the controversial medical loss ratio rules as having a smoothing effect on premium swings. “We got pulled through the crucible against our will and have been reshaped because of it,” he said. “For most of what has already been implemented, it has been a pretty good thing.”

Moreover, he discounted the prospect that the results of the 2012 presidential election or a Supreme Court decision striking down aspects of the ACA would deter the change.  

“Reform is not going to stop. It won’t go away.”

The article is discussed by Rick Unger at Forbes, who points out that while (our sold out) legislators will block any attempt to pass single payer legislation "for the forseeable future [...] if the for-profit insurance companies find it no longer worth their while to stay in the business, which is my own expectation and a notion that appears to be shared by Mr. Bertolli of Aetna, a single-payer system may be thrust upon our politicians when government is the only entity large enough to take on the financial responsibility of our health care system."

Mr. Unger argues that we best prepare for the inevitable (an inevitable supported by most Americans), so that this inevitable is a "uniquely American," quality single payer system unlike anything the world has seen before.

(Though the civilized world has never seen anything like what we uniquely have now, as Americans.)

Courtesy of My China Connection

Ooopssss!!! “Caught with your pants down”.

Let's not, says Mr. Unger of Forbes.