Bombshell: United Healthcare may exit individual insurance exchanges after 2016

Hot Air ^ | 11-19-15 | Ed Morrissey

[markomalley]

If you like your insurance carrier, you can keep your insurance carrier. The nation's largest provider of health insurance announced this morning that it may choose to stop offering individual coverage after 2016, and will "pull back on its marketing efforts" immediately in this market. If the losses continue and United pulls out of next year's exchanges, it will set up a very bad moment for ObamaCare -- and for Democrats just weeks before the election:

UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH) today reported revised expectations for 2015, reflecting a continuing deterioration in individual exchange-compliant product performance, and provided an initial outlook for 2016.

"In recent weeks, growth expectations for individual exchange participation have tempered industrywide, co-operatives have failed, and market data has signaled higher risks and more difficulties while our own claims experience has deteriorated, so we are taking this proactive step," said Stephen J. Hemsley, chief executive officer of UnitedHealth Group. "We continue to be pleased with the growth and overall performance of our Company outside of the individual exchange products and look forward to strong, positive and broad based earnings growth across our enterprise in 2016." ...

UnitedHealthcare has pulled back on its marketing efforts for individual exchange products in 2016. The Company is evaluating the viability of the insurance exchange product segment and will determine during the first half of 2016 to what extent it can continue to serve the public exchange markets in 2017.

Don't kid yourselves. If United is going to "pull back" on marketing efforts for 2016, it's because they don't see themselves being in the market in 2017. Just by announcing it, United has set up the expectation of withdrawal for investors, who do not want to have good money chasing after bad.

[ladyjane]

I go with the other theory - they got the dirt on him.

[HLPhat]

>> they don’t see themselves being in the market in 2017.

Hmm. So will that be Trump’s fault or still Bush’s?

[zeestephen]

Thanks for the two links, Q.

My understanding was superficial - as you noticed.

I thought “risk corridors” referred to patient health risks. I did not understand that they referred to the re-insurance subsidy.

I was actually insured by United Healthcare for 14 months, before my Medicare started.

UH tried to game the system by waiting one year to enter the O-Care market. They hoped a significant percentage of people with pre-existing conditions would sign with other insurers before UH started offering policies.

That hope did not work out for my policy. I deliberately kept my retirement income low for those 14 months. I drew significant O-Care subsidies. And I rewarded UH with a $5,000 policy loss because of my pre-existing A-Fib and skin cancer risk.

Personally, I still blame Republicans for O-Care. It's been clear for at least a decade that, politically, America was going to move into some form of organized government health care for those who could not afford it.

In 2010, a break even Medicaid policy would have cost about $5,500. We could have “insured” every American citizen who actually needed, or wanted, a policy for about $200 billion a year.

It would not have been a cheap solution, or easy to implement, but, politically, it would have been a viable alternative to O-Care, and it would have spared us from the O-Care catastrophe that was predictable from the first day.