Aetna CEO: Obamacare is in a "Death Spiral"

Yes, well.

That's how you got Trump.

The CEO of Aetna, Mark Bertolini, says Obamacare is in a "death spiral." Bertolini was speaking at an event hosted by the Wall Street Journal Wednesday. Asked about the future of Obamacare, Bertolini replied, "I think you will see a lot more withdrawals this year of plans." Humana announced yesterday, shortly after its proposed merger with Aetna collapsed, that it was pulling out from its remaining Obamacare business in 2018.

But don't go popping the corks yet.

Obamacare needs a miracle -- and I give you the G.
O.
P.

Consider Paul Ryan's feel-good meeting with Senate Republicans on Tuesday. The House speaker trekked across the Capitol to reassure senators that lawmakers are making more progress toward repealing the health care law than the media are reporting.

But not everyone was buying it. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) left before it was over, having heard enough of a conversation that he says centers around keeping Obamacare's Medicaid expansion intact and creating tax credits that he called a "new entitlement program," though a Republican in the room rebutted the notion that the topic of Medicaid expansion came up in the Tuesday meeting with Ryan.

"I hear things that are unacceptable to me," Paul said in an interview afterward. "If they don't seem to care what conservatives think about complete repeal of Obamacare, they’re going to be shocked when they count the votes."

Lamarr Alexander says it will take Trump's personal intervention -- just declaring "We're doing this" -- to get any kind of movement on the issue.

Um, yeah, that's true, and Trump is derelict about being specific on this front, but Republicans have been vowing to repeal this for seven years now and it's kind of insane that they themselves aren't committed to doing just that, no?

Ann Coulter points out that the GOP, when Obama was president and could veto the repeals, passed six Obamacare repeals. But now that Trump is president and (presumably) wouldn't veto a repeal, they sit on their thumbs.

Ever get the feeling you're being played?

posted by Ace at 11:38 AM

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