antitrust

Aetna Fights Back Against Antitrust Goons, Threatens to Drop Obamacare

rafifarber The Jewish Libertarian Blog , ,

It’s always nice to see companies fighting back against the Feds. Aetna’s got some guts and some ammo doing this, because the government is going to go after them hard now, looking for all kinds of regulations that it “violates”. Aetna is threatening to drop out of Obamacare, which is already reeling from other major pullouts. Soon there will be no insurers left.

It is basically telling the Justice Department to leave it alone in its business plans to merge with Humana, which needs to be done to save the companies after Obamacare is draining the entire system by subsidizing high cost patients with money that doesn’t exist because younger people aren’t signing up, amazingly.

The Justice Department is in charge of deciding which mergers are a “trust” and which are fine, which they do totally arbitrarily because there is no objective definition of what a “trust” is. From the letter written by Mark Bertolini, CEO of Aetna, to some guy named Ryan, an antitrust lawyer working for The Man:

Our analysis to date makes clear that if the deal were challenged and/or blocked we would need to take immediate actions to mitigate public exchange and ACA small group losses. Specifically, if the DOJ sues to enjoin the transaction, we will immediately take action to reduce our 2017 exchange footprint…

Unfortunately, a challenge by the DOJ to that acquisition and/or the DOJ successfully blocking the transaction would have a negative financial impact on Aetna and would impair Aetna’s ability to continue its support, leaving Aetna with no choice but to take actions to steward its financial health. These contemplated actions would include the actions discussed below.

Although we remain supportive of the Administration’s efforts to expand coverage, we must also face market realities. Our customers expect us to keep their insurance products affordable and continually improving, and our shareholders expect that we will generate a market return on invested capital for them. We have been operating on the public exchanges since the beginning of 2014 at a substantial loss…

Finally, based on our analysis to date, we believe it is very likely that we would need to leave the public exchange business entirely and plan for additional business efficiencies should our deal ultimately be blocked.

 

 

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The “controversial” gas agreement that exempts the gas industry from antitrust laws

rafifarber Economics, The Jewish Libertarian Blog , , ,

The left is really pissed off now because the people who discovered a bunch of natural gas off the coast of Israel will not have to be harassed by the antitrust authority for trying to develop a natural resource. All the leftists who had absolutely nothing to do with discovering anything – no investment, no capital, no nothing – are all upset that they will not get a bigger piece of the action by having the companies who discovered the Leviathan field taxed up the wazoo and prevented from ever developing the field because doing so violates some arbitrary law.

Antitrust is a made up concept that is indefinable, because a trust is indefinable. If two companies working together on one project and setting a price for it is a trust, then two groups of people in the same company working together on one project and setting a price for it is a trust. If a trust is a thing and antitrust is justified, then all economic cooperation of any kind must be forbidden.

The result of consistent application of antitrust laws would be mass starvation and death, because nobody would be allowed to cooperate on anything, and all who are not completely self-sufficient would die.

So, in advocating for antitrust laws, these people are rooting on mass global starvation.

Good job and yasher koach to Netanyahu for at least getting this passed. I doubt it will stand up to the Supreme Court of Idiots, and if they overturn this and force the antitrust laws then I would encourage the discoverers of the field, Noble Energy, Delek, and Yitzchak Tshuva to destroy the field and blow it up, Francisco d’Anconia Atlas Shrugged style so nobody can use it, and stick it to those “judges”.