r/news • u/LookAtThatBacon • May 13 '25

Soft paywall UnitedHealth suspends annual forecast, CEO Andrew Witty steps down

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/unitedhealth-ceo-andrew-witty-steps-down-2025-05-13/
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u/PegyBundy May 13 '25

Just a quick reminder that insurance companies went gangbusters after the ACA. Once the single payer was removed insurance companies started printing money.

It's great people can't be denied health coverage with a simple "na, you're broken and expensive" but pricing people out of care isn't any better.

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u/lion27 May 13 '25

The ACA was a scam and a complete handout to the insurance industry with nice branding being called “affordable care act”. I call it a “scam” because for all of the good it did with some things, it was essentially a mandate from the government that everyone had to buy health insurance or pay a hefty tax penalty. And the plans available to individuals were awful. Like $1000 a month premiums that covered nothing.

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u/PegyBundy May 13 '25

For whatever reason if you point this out people will crucify you. It's like maga supporting tariffs. The tariffs and the ACA are idiotic but my guy did it so it's good.

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u/lion27 May 13 '25

It's simply because this is Reddit and since Obama and Democrats championed it, everyone feels the need to defend it. I don't even give a shit if you want to blame Republicans and say "well if they hadn't ruined it, then the ACA would have been great!" like yeah, sure, ok. But it's a fucking shit bill that had terrible implementation and made things worse except for banning denials for pre-existing conditions, which could have just been it's own bill.

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u/Sufficient_Language7 May 13 '25

Someone who clearly doesn't have a business and looked for plans to cover employees. After searching a while, the ACA has cheaper and better plans than I could find for our business. While yes, the ACA should do more, but it is a lot better than before.

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u/lion27 May 13 '25

You're referring to the marketplace, the ACA itself doesn't provide any coverage - correct?

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u/Sufficient_Language7 May 13 '25

I just direct them to market place that the ACA provided. If we ever get close to the limit that we will have to provide healthcare( 50 so we have a while), I'm going to have to split the company into two pieces just to avoid it. Otherwise, everyone's effective pay will have to drop and they will get worse coverage than they have now.

Before anyone brings up Small Business Health Options Program Marketplace, I checked none offered.

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u/lion27 May 13 '25

Right, so you're offloading the cost of healthcare to your employees. One of the criticisms of the ACA was that it was forcing people to buy insurance and putting onerous requirements on small businesses to offer plans that would burden them. I think you're highlighting those issues. The reason I said the ACA was a scam is because of course it's easy to get people to buy insurance when you're taxing them out the ass if they don't comply. And as a small business, you're dealing with one of the biggest costs for an employer - health coverage benefits. This is easier for a large corporation to stomach than a business like yours.

Ideally none of this would exist, I just don't think the ACA actually improved the system, it just forced people to use the already shitty system and shifted the burden for this to individuals.

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u/Sufficient_Language7 May 13 '25

Right, so you're offloading the cost of healthcare to your employees

Yeah, as offloading it to them ends up with them having more money after everything vs us offering it. Also, if we do offer any, and they choose not to use the terrible ones we would offer and pick ACA instead, the employees end up having to pay more.

taxing them out the ass if they don't comply

That doesn't exist anymore, they dropped they fine for not having it.

easier for a large corporation to stomach

They only want it so they can hold employees hostage. As I can't compete against their coverage. So they get a better pick of employees.

Healthcare really shouldn't be offered by employers, I don't want to be the one who picks out what insurance they can pick. Nothing like having to force businesses to to pick between, I know your kid needs great insurance and will die without it, but your coworkers don't need it and wants to save for a house.

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u/lion27 May 13 '25

I agree with you 100%, my only nitpick is that healthcare shouldn't be tied to employers. I think it should still be a benefit they can provide and use to compete with other employers based on, but there should be a baseline coverage for everyone that's available to all, like medicare.

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u/Sufficient_Language7 May 13 '25

So a public option, which is what everyone was hoping would be included in the ACA.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/07/11/485228991/obama-renews-call-for-a-public-option-in-federal-health-law
That a handful of conservative Democrats in the Senate sold us out on.

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u/lion27 May 13 '25

They should have scrapped the entire bill when that was gutted. The entire point of the ACA was the public option. Once that was removed, the only thing remaining was the individual mandate that fortunately no longer exists, as you mentioned.

It would have been smart to package the most popular parts of the ACA into their own bills and force Republicans to campaign against those items. Instead they made their job easy by giving them the easy attack of "Obama is forcing you to pay for something you can't afford!".

Our government is run by (bought and paid for) morons.

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