Most of the time, President Trump’s messages on “fake news” are illiberal, embarrassing, and suggestive of a character defect. But sometimes he has a point.
On Tuesday, a New York Times article was headlined “Insurance Company’s Profit Indicates Obamacare Isn’t Dead.”
It concerns Centene, a health insurance company that, the article alleges, “continues to defy the Republican talking point that the individual market is collapsing.”
The article makes its case by noting that Centene has just “reported significantly higher net earnings of $254 million for the three months ended June 30, compared to $170 million for the same quarter of 2016.” It also references Centene CEO Michael Neidorff’s claim that “marketplace business continues to be particularly strong, confirming our business-as-usual approach.”
Reading the piece, you would believe that Centene has successfully managed to balance its costings with marketplace participation. In essence, you’d believe that Centene is proof that Obamacare’s model: healthy participants offsetting unhealthy participant costs is economically viable.
But there’s a catch.
As the New York Times very subtly notes, Centene “has traditionally served low-income individuals who are eligible for Medicaid… [and] has also benefited from the Medicaid expansion, adding an additional 1.1 million members.”
That’s a big catch.
After all, if the government is paying Centene to provide insurance, it’s not exactly a market-economy corporation. On the contrary, thanks to Obamacare’s vast expansion of Medicaid to otherwise healthy working-age men and women, Centene is basically an arm of government.
For insurers who can’t rely on government-funded premiums, however, Obamacare is a very different story. As I’ve explained, it is a disaster of inadequate participation and impossible costs. Conversely, to suggest that Centene proves the Obamacare marketplace works, is fake news.
Centene leaders know this. And they know that without one group of people, they would have a big problem.
Those people, of course, are Democrats.
As a search of Centene political donations shows, the company provided three times as many donations to Democrats as to Republicans during the 2016 election cycle. In addition, the donor disclosure website Open Secrets reports that 21 out of 29 Centene lobbyists in 2015-2016 are former government officials.
How about CEO Neidorff, who told the New York Times that “leaders in Washington bear a responsibility to ensure that [Republican reform] doesn’t happen.” He gave thousands of dollars to multiple Democratic candidates in the 2016 election. I don’t blame him. He knows that government money is the key to his business succeeding.
The New York Times article should have added the above context. But it didn’t. Its reporters are on the Obamacare train, and they’re ready to ride it off the edge of the cliff.
