Aetna to pull out of most Obamacare exchanges

In the latest blow to Obamacare, Aetna is vastly reducing its presence on the individual exchanges in 2017.

The insurer will stop offering policies on the exchanges in 11 of the 15 states where it currently operates, according to a press release it issued Monday evening. Aetna will only sell Obamacare products in Delaware, Iowa, Nebraska and Virginia.

Aetna said earlier this month that it was halting its exchange expansion plans for 2017 and reviewing its participation in President Obama's signature health reform program. The company noted Monday that it has lost $430 million in its individual policies unit since the exchanges opened in January 2014.

Aetna, which had 838,000 exchange customers at the end of June, said its policyholders are turning out to be sicker and costlier than expected. The company, along with its peers, has criticized the federal program designed to mitigate those risks.

"Providing affordable, high-quality health care options to consumers is not possible without a balanced risk pool," said Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini.

The company will continue to offer individual policies outside of the Obamacare exchanges in the vast majority of markets where it now does business. Off-exchange products are not eligible for federal subsidies.

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read:http://money.cnn.com/2016/08/15/news/economy/aetna-obamacare/

Whoo boy. The most scathing takedown of Hannity for perpetuating HRC health lies

For more than two decades, the lunatic fringe has gradually taken control of the Republican Party, thanks to craven media figures like Fox News’s Sean Hannity.

A man who purports to be a dutiful Catholic, Hannity has made a career out of violating the ninth commandment (or eighth in his faith) against lying about others. If Hannity stopped vomiting up falsehoods, his program would be nothing but a test pattern. From him and the others in the “Who cares if it’s false?” conservative media camp, we have heard over the decades that Hillary and Bill Clinton murdered many people, that the Bush administration found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that Obama could be on the verge of declaring martial law, and on and on.

<snip>

But now, Hannity and his ilk have gone too far with their recent lies about Hillary Clinton’s health, a conspiracy theory conservative media groups have seized upon with no regard for truth. They have used misrepresented photos, theories from quacks and other nonsense to back up their story line.

And then came a video of Clinton making goofy movements with her head when a reporter held a tape recorder very close to her face. Being pulled in different directions by multiple speakers at once, Clinton playfully acted like a bobblehead doll, smiling and then speaking after the joke was over.

Hannity and his lying pals shrieked: Clinton had a seizure! Right in front of the cameras! “Are there many seizures like that?” Hannity said. “This looks like violent, out of control movements on her part.”

I know this response to Sean Hannity is a little raw, but as someone with epilepsy, I hope my editors will let this slip through: Fuck you, Sean. Your willingness to deceive your viewers—to degrade those of us with epilepsy, to suggest something is a seizure when it looks nothing like one, to leave people dumber about this condition—is unforgivable.



Much more:

http://www.newsweek.com/sean-hannity-lies-hillary-clinton-health-490469?google_editors_picks=true

So what do you think constitutes "extreme, extreme vetting"?

The way trump is going after journalists, we'll be lucky if some deranged

Trumpster doesn't murder a reporter.

South Sudan Troops Raped, Beat Foreigners as U.N. Force Ignored Calls for Help

The soldier pointed his AK-47 at the female aid worker and gave her a choice.

"Either you have sex with me, or we make every man here rape you and then we shoot you in the head," she remembers him saying.

She didn't really have a choice. By the end of the evening, she had been raped by 15 South Sudanese soldiers.

On July 11, South Sudanese troops, fresh from winning a battle in the capital, Juba, over opposition forces, went on a nearly four-hour rampage through a residential compound popular with foreigners, in one of the worst targeted attacks on aid workers in South Sudan's three-year civil war.

They shot dead a local journalist while forcing the foreigners to watch, raped several foreign women, singled out Americans, beat and robbed people and carried out mock executions, several witnesses told The Associated Press.

For hours throughout the assault, the U.N. peacekeeping force stationed less than a mile away refused to respond to desperate calls for help. Neither did embassies, including the U.S. Embassy.

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http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/south-sudan-troops-raped-beat-foreigners-u-n-force-ignored-n630876

Here's the transcript of Trump's awful speech

He looks like he's shrinking. He sounds like a broken man going through the motions.

Robotic, monotone.

Doped to the gills?

This is like listening to the phone book even though it's a litany of the most appalling atrocities he can come up with.

Just holy shit.

If you are against the TPP as it currently is, what specific changes to what areas within it,

could make you into a supporter?

Link to full text:

https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/trans-pacific-partnership/tpp-full-text

Links to sites opposing and supporting it:

Pro:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/economy/trade

https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/TPP-Detailed-Summary-of-US-Objectives.pdf

https://www.uschamber.com/international/international-policy/support-the-trans-pacific-partnership

http://www.tppcoalition.org/about/

Anti- TPP:

http://www.citizen.org/TPP

http://www.aflcio.org/Issues/Trade/Trans-Pacific-Partnership-Free-Trade-Agreement-TPP

http://www.sierraclub.org/trade/trans-pacific-partnership

http://infojustice.org/archives/category/trade-agreements/trans-pacific-partnership

I don't see Manafort lasting more than 2 weeks.

And I don't see Trump lasting more than 6.

It's just toppling down. Raining shit.

It just seems impossible to sustain.

Sure people have been predicting that was imminent for over a year now and Trump and his miserable campaign somehow defied political gravity over and over, but between the republican convention and now it's been dizzyingly downhill.

I suppose some unforeseen mindblowing event could happen that would see his fortunes reversed, but doesn't it seem much more likely that he'll just keep plummeting through the political atmosphere?

Is it important to bear witness or is it glorified navel gazing?

So I tend to belong to the former, even though I may be against U.S. armed intervention and all I can do is support NGOs that provide relief or attempt to.

I don't believe in looking away. Maybe that just sounds pretentious, but honestly it's not. I want to remember that these are people, just people, essentially like me or you, who are being slaughtered or are suffering horribly from war.

It's so damned easy to look away. It's seems so...seamless; one war or massacre or bombing bleeding into another.

It seems so senseless. It seems so futile.

There are so many. So many victims, so many refugees, so many atrocities.

So I say Aleppo or Sirte.

You can't look everywhere. You can't even know where to look. And there's always something else to draw our eyes away. Some freakish event or celebrity sports moment; the gladiatorial election season.

But always people are suffering in war zones. That is a constant. Has always been a constant. That is cold comfort.

I don't want to forget the people who are out on rough seas today in small unseaworthy crafts.