Ayla Ellison and Molly Gamble look at the consolidation in the health insurance and health care industries, due in no small part to ♡bamaCare!!!:
1. In the U.S., the big five payers have traditionally been Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield — which includes 36 companies, the largest being Anthem — Cigna, Humana and UnitedHealthcare. Whether looking at revenue, market share or presence in a specific area such as Medicare Advantage, each of these insurers is a major to dominant force in the industry.
2. With Aetna acquiring Humana and a deal in the works for Anthem to takeover Cigna, the landscape drastically changes, and there will be three key payers instead of five.
3. While not yet a single-payer system, consolidation is causing the system to look more like a small oligarchy. It may actually lead some parties who hated the idea of Medicare as a single payer to desire this. It may also over time lead to the proliferation of new payers.
4. The consolidation is quite frightening for smaller providers of all sorts as it leaves them with fewer access points for patients. The leverage of providers with payers will take a significant hit. [Emphasis added]
A few big players are easier for Washington to corral than a multitude of little ones. They’re also the only organizations able to cope with ♡bamaCare!!!’s never-ending paperwork demands, exposing Obama’s “reduce waste and fraud” lie.
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