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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday January 24 2017, @09:39AM   Printer-friendly
from the I'm-shocked,-shocked-I-say dept.

Aetna claimed this summer that it was pulling out of all but four of the 15 states where it was providing Obamacare individual insurance because of a business decision — it was simply losing too much money on the Obamacare exchanges.

Now a federal judge has ruled that that was a rank falsehood. In fact, says Judge John D. Bates, Aetna made its decision at least partially in response to a federal antitrust lawsuit blocking its proposed $37-billion merger with Humana. Aetna threatened federal officials with the pullout before the lawsuit was filed, and followed through on its threat once it was filed. Bates made the observations in the course of a ruling he issued Monday blocking the merger.

Aetna executives had moved heaven and earth to conceal their decision-making process from the court, in part by discussing the matter on the phone rather than in emails, and by shielding what did get put in writing with the cloak of attorney-client privilege, a practice Bates found came close to "malfeasance."

Source:

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-aetna-obamacare-20170123-story.html

At what point does arbitrarily screwing with the healthcare of millions of people rise to the level of criminality?


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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @11:41PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 24 2017, @11:41PM (#458329)

    ACA is not.

    Before everyone pulled out it was ~500 a month. Now it is ~1200 a month. That is for 2 people and a 12,000 deductible. Before the whole show I could get the same plan for about 50-100 a month. Even that was considered 'high'.

    I make too little to get the subsidy. I live in the wrong state so medicare does not cover. When I had a job I didnt have to pay for it my boss did.

    In what way is this thing affordable?

    I instead bought a non qualifying plan. 60 bucks a month for 2 people 2k yearly deductible. Covers everything the ACA did but they can screw me on the fine print. Even before they were going to kill it I still come out ahead with the fine.

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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 25 2017, @04:04AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 25 2017, @04:04AM (#458389)

    The original plan was solid. Except the original plan wasn't implemented. Remember half the government is trying to destroy it. They pick and chip away a few parts and all of a sudden a good plan goes bad. Basically they took a nicely paved road and put in a few potholes. Just enough so people would complain to get the road repaved and so they can point a finger at the original pavers and claim they did a shitty job. The insurance companies also took advantage of the situation. There were clauses about plans being grandfathered in. Instead of dealing with those, the insurance companies went around and renewed all those older plans thus turning them into new plans. Now they don't qualify for the price protections so they jacked up your rates and pointed their fingers at ACA as a scapegoat so you wouldn't notice what they were doing. Just like how you pray your ISP and phone companies won't decide to increase their fees every billing period nor terminate your current plan and only offer more expensive ones. Oh, one state had a bad storm so now we'll charge the entire country a new disaster preparedness fee. It's not our fault each new year is more profitable than the last, we need you to chip in a bit extra so the same service outage doesn't happen to you, even though it will and we'll raise prices again to cover that too.

    If everyone was working together for the betterment of all, we could have excellent healthcare. But it's a game to them, a unending competition to win. Read the books from retires who later in life regretted their younger actions, pushing products simply to push the most while knowing they were harming those they sold to. You'll understand the mindset behind how the country and many businesses operate. It's all who can get the most and who can get away with the most. No non-self-serving actions allowed.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 25 2017, @04:31PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 25 2017, @04:31PM (#458520)

      That's right! They want to destroy a good idea just because it's a game!

      Touchdown! Spike it in the endzone! Good game! Woo!

      It can't possibly be because of massive disagreements with what was in the law, how it was implemented, who was constrained by it, or anything like that.

      All those people bitching about states' rights? Just a game! Even the supreme court was in on the game! 5-4 against the feds? Close game!

      All the people bitching about how the law itself didn't actually do anything substantive about medical inflation? Interference, flag on the play!

      ... or maybe they had serious concerns motivated by an interest in public policy, or the role of government, or economic efficiency, or the treatment of incumbent insurance companies, or the hodgepodge of medical billing rates, or ...

      Nah! It's all a game! Woo! Go team!

      Get over yourself.