Tuesday -- The Genie Cannot Be Put Back Into The Bottle

Active rigs: 181

The Wall Street Journal

Blackberry has abandoned its plan to sell itself. And that was the top story, front page of the WSJ. That tells me that all is right with the world, if that's the lead story.

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This, of course, was predictable. I was blogging about this from the beginning. If folks understand how insurance works, they understand that ObamaCare will implode unless the program is significantly changed. At this point, about the only thing I see working is for the government to become the single payer, as in National Health Insurance, modeled on Great Britain's great success story. The genie cannot be placed back in the bottle.

Here's the WSJ story: the young are avoiding signing up for health care plans. 

Insurers say the early buyers of health coverage on the nation's troubled new websites are older than expected so far, raising early concerns about the economics of the insurance marketplaces. [The experience in Wisconsin: the median age has risen from 41 to 51. Not trivial.]

If the trend continues, an older, more expensive set of customers could drive up prices for everyone, the insurers say, by forcing them to spread their costs around. "We need a broad range of people to make this work, and we're not seeing that right now," said Heather Thiltgen of Medical Mutual of Ohio, the state's largest insurer by individual customers. "We're seeing the population skewing older."

And this, of course:

The law bars insurers from charging sicker customers higher rates, and limits the amount they can charge older people compared with younger ones. It offers new subsidies to help cover premiums available to many lower-income applicants. Insurers are relying on a steady stream of younger, healthier enrollees to offset medical bills of older, sicker customers.

One of the "fun" things about ObamaCare is exactly what Nancy Pelosi said: we really won't know what is in the bill until it is passed and goes into effect. I knew that the law barred insurers from charging sicker customers higher rates, but I did not know there was actually a "delta limiter" on charges based on age, sort of like restrictor plates on NASCAR stock cars. LOL. 

A companion article which we could see as early as tomorrow is this: the healthy are avoiding signing up for health care plans.

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By the way, again for the date-time stamp bragging rights: not signing up for ObamaCare will be the largest act of social disobedience ever seen in this country. Even my wife, a strong supporter of Mr Obama some years ago, says she would not sign up for ObamaCare. She says this is not an "act of civil disobedience," it's just common sense (not to sign up). She, apparently, does not understand ObamaCare is the law of the land and not signing up for it is an act of civil disobedience. Okay, I've made my point. Let's see if anyone picks up on this a year from now.

By the way, the largest act of civil disobedience in this country is driving over the speed limit on the federal interstate highway system. Probably in second place is failure to pay taxes on profits made from selling illicit drugs. 

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There were no stories on Syria in the front page of the on-line edition of the WSJ.

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Wow, this is interesting. I was not aware of this story: Weatherford International CEO Bernard Duroc-Danner is trying to save the company, and making an unusually forthright mea culpa. So far, the results of his reinvention have been mixed.

On Monday, the company reported relatively flat third-quarter revenue of $3.82 billion as earnings fell 69% to $22 million, or three cents a share, from $70 million, or nine cents a share, a year earlier. The company also said it hired a chief financial officer.

But investors are still smarting from the company's earlier missteps, which slashed the company's stock-market valuation by $7 billion in less than two years, to $12.6 billion.
Bill Herbert, an analyst at investment bank Simmons & Co., said Weatherford is emerging from "the crisis management bunker."

"I don't think there's any question as to their survivability now," he said. "Last year they had cancer. Now the cancer's gone into remission."

Cobbled together from more than 100 acquisitions over two decades, Weatherford became a smaller rival to oil-field services behemoths such as Schlumberger Ltd.  and Halliburton Co., with an expertise in wringing more fossil fuels from aging fields.

Weatherford has a huge footprint in the Bakken. Huge. 

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Not citing ObamaCare, Kellogg announced it will cut 7% of its workforce by 2017.

WSJ: "don't be shocked if Tesla beats forecasts."