[hardcandy]

The ACA provided over $2 billion in startup funds for about three dozen non-profit health care co-ops (new insurance companies) who were meant to provide competition, increased choice and lower prices for consumers. Almost all of these co-ops are now bankrupt thanks to a medley of fraud and incompetence. As noted elsewhere in the thread, Land of Lincoln in IL just publicly announced their dissolution today. What happened? Well, it turns out running an insurance company is hard, and in return for doing that hard job, the executives, even of these non-profits, want to be paid a lot of money. In many cases the Government allocated startup funds to politically-connected individuals who sucked it out of the system and into their own pockets. So no, the grass isn't always greener. You can't just slap a ''non-profit'' label on something and expect problems to be fixed. And to the extent you pay executives less money, they will work less, and in the absence of that leadership, systemic future risks start to accumulate. The selfish profit motive is still one of the core values that our society depends upon in order to function the way we expect it to. Gordon Gekko put it one way: ''Greed is Good!''. Milton Friedman another: ''Nirvana is not for this world.'' Not yet, at least.

[djur]

Congress also pulled funding for the risk corridors system that was supposed to keep insurers who were unlucky in the exchanges (i.e. getting sicker, more expensive customers) afloat. The co-ops suffered particularly badly from that.