I didn’t want to let this Felice Freyer article slip through the cracks.  It’s about the wave of new Medicare Advantage clients that Blue Cross & Blue Shield is picking up, owing to changes at United-Healthcare, reducing doctor choices dramatically.  I’ve rearranged some sentences from the article in order better to follow the bouncing ball:

Under the Affordable Care Act, payments to Medicare Advantage plans are gradually being reduced … Faced with these cuts, United is trying to save money by working with smaller networks…

A federal judge in Connecticut granted a temporary restraining order barring United from implementing a reduced network in two counties in Connecticut. United has appealed.

United confirmed that, in a special agreement negotiated earlier this year, some 4,900 retired state employees and their families have been exempted from the network changes. Although they remain in United’s Medicare Advantage plan, they will continue to have access to the same providers as previously.

Insurers build plans and networks that make sense within the constraints of government programs and their own business models. When the government changes a program and large parts of those models no longer work, companies adjust them.

In response to something best described as political pressure, a judge steps in and insists that a private company cannot legally change its model, at least yet.  The state government (which regulates and sets laws affecting the company) gets its retirees a special deal not available to the ordinary resident.

In both of these cases, the costs that the government forces United to accept have to go somewhere.  Inevitably, that somewhere will be on the backs of the least politically powerful group.

The farther we go along the path of government control of healthcare, the more we’ll see government insisting that people behave under a contrived reality that ultimately serves its own needs.