Tuesday, April 19, 2016

‘Affordable’ Care Collapse: Top Crony Healthcare Firm Starts to Pull Out of Some States

UnitedHealth, the nation’s biggest health insurer, will cut its participation in public health insurance exchanges to only a handful of states next year after expanding to nearly three dozen for this year, reports AP.

CEO Stephen Hemsley said that the company expects losses from its exchange business to total more than $1 billion for this year and last. He added that the company cannot continue to broadly serve the market created by the Affordable Care Act’s coverage expansion due partly to the higher risk that comes with its customers.

The state-based exchanges are a key element behind the Affordable Care Act’s push to expand insurance coverage. But insurers have struggled with higher than expected claims from that business. UnitedHealth Group Inc. said it now expects to lose $650 million this year on its exchange business, up from its previous projection for $525 million. The insurer lost $475 million in 2015.

UnitedHealth has already decided to pull out of Arkansas, Georgia and Michigan in 2017.

Imagine that, you distort healthcare via central planning, including for pre-existing conditions,  and even crony healthcare firms can't make money at it.

Healthcare socialism is the most horrific thing to come out of the Obama presidency. It will ultimately result in declining life expectancy.

 -RW



4 comments:

  1. Thankfully, I left United Health years ago.

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  2. There is just no way anyone could have predicted this.

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  3. I'm shocked and dismayed by this. I mean, how will the uninsured receive their health care now? They weren't able to get it before because of the mean and nasty free market, so what is it to become of them???

    Ok, jokes aside, it doesn't surprise me is just how FAST this whole damned business of government-managed insurance market quickly unraveled. What does surprise me is that the news media has shown very little interest in this. I thought they would be clamoring for a single-payer system by now. Could it be that they're feeling the Bern as well?

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  4. OH the horrors! There are plenty of other providers and it does not mean a thing to me or anyone else that they can't make billions of our health care.

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