Aetna exits CA socialist medicine scheme for individuals

June 18, 2013

By John Seiler

Wait! Wasn’t Obamacare supposed to give medical care and insurance to everybody, at a lower cost? How can that happen if insurers exit? This just in:

“Aetna Inc. said it would stop selling individual health insurance policies in California next month, and nearly 50,000 existing policyholders will have to find new coverage by January.

“The company’s announcement Monday comes a month after it opted not to participate in California’s new state-run insurance market for consumers, a key component of the new federal healthcare law.

“Aetna was a distant fourth in the state’s individual health market with a 5.2% market share in 2011, according toCitigroup data. Anthem Blue Cross, Kaiser Permanente and Blue Shield of California dominate that business with a collective 87% market share in the state.”

This is just another indication that socialism doesn’t work. It’s just the first of many breakdowns in the system. Eventually, we’ll end up with a crummy, government-run system like Canada’s, where you have to leave the country to get care for anything serious, the way Newfundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams did.

Except that Canada’s socialized medicine costs 8 percent of GDP, half what America’s does, and will. So Canadians can save up for money to travel South for capitalist medicine. By contrast, Americans will continue paying 16 percent of GDP, twice the Canadian cost. So we won’t be able to save up to go elsewhere for health care. We’ll all die miserably waiting in long lines for Obamacare.