MarketWatch reported:
It may not be exactly like being cast adrift on an ice floe, but today’s seniors and retirees are hurting nonetheless.Exited. That's the word private equity underwriters use when they've cashed in on an investment. Benefit cuts for workers are not a new phenomenon. Consider this 2011 story on rapidly disappearing benefits:
The advent of Obamacare has cost many retirees their company-sponsored health plan by taking away their firms’ tax deduction. It no longer pays for companies to subsidize the cost of their retirees’ health care, so many have exited these programs.
Now that they are in the open market, retirees and seniors are confronted by soaring premiums when they seek to purchase a health plan.
Employers have significantly cut many of the benefits they offer to workers over the past five years. "The two biggest areas where cuts have come have been in health care and retirement because that's where costs have increased the most."
The time frame covered is 2006 to 2015. Over this decade private equity underwriters became as common as cockroaches. President Obama's health reformer, PEU Nancy-Ann DeParle, designed a program that shifts the burden for health insurance from employers to individuals and a tapped out Uncle Sam.
Not only do seniors and retirees face a greater financial burden, they enter an insurance and health care delivery system with overwhelming complexity. Obama deforms health care with profiteering and distorting bribes/punishments. The underlying goals and methods of PPACA are no different than Wall
Street's incentive compensation which resulted in widespread criminal
behavior.
While seniors and retirees are set adrift in a sea of mind boggling complexity, the investor class makes big bets on healthcare. They'll happily pick seniors' pockets for their 30% annual returns.
A big round of applause for Obama's vulture investor class and PPACA's absurd architects. The system is fulfilling its design. Seniors are to suffer or die for their country's financial sector.
Profit optimization is the primary goal. Everything else is secondary, including retirees and the elderly.
Update 4-16-20: A coronavirus pandemic revealed
America's broken healthcare system and PPACA's many shortcomings. How
many 22 million newly unemployed can afford the premiums? How many of
these will get COVID-19 and die at home without proper care?
Update 1-20-22: In 2020, the average health insurance premium contribution was 6.9% of median income, while the average deductible was 4.7%, combining for a mighty 11.6% of median income. Curve not bent in the least.