Posted on 12/01/2015 4:13:21 PM PST by SkyPilot
The CEO of UnitedHealthCare on Tuesday said he regretted the decision to enter the ObamaCare marketplace last year, which the company says has resulted in millions of dollars in losses.
"It was for us a bad decision," UnitedHealth CEO Stephen Hemsley said at an investors meeting in New York, according to Bloomberg Business.
UnitedHealth, the countrys largest insurer, announced last month that it would no longer advertise its ObamaCare plans over the next year and may pull out completely in 2016, a move that sent shockwaves across the healthcare sector.
Hemsleys remarks double down on his earlier warning that the ObamaCare exchanges remain weaker than expected after two years and that it will take far longer for insurers to profit from the millions of new enrollees.
The company had already eyed ObamaCares federal marketplace cautiously since it launched in 2013. UnitedHealth only began selling plans on the exchanges last year.
Now, UnitedHealth officials have said that move will result in a half-billion dollars in losses over two years.
Hemsley said it was smart to sit out of the exchanges for the first year, but that the company should have held out another year.
"In retrospect, we should have stayed out longer," he said, adding that he believes the marketplace will take more than âa season or twoâ to develop.
"We did not believe it would form this slowly, be this porous, or become this severe," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
Big insurance thought they would see profits from young healthy people being forced to buy insurance. What they got was a bunch a sickly old people who never would have been able to get into the insurance pool before.
In better times in this country big corporations who make stupid mistakes collapse and upstarts or competitors who made the right decisions buy the carcass at cut rates so they can increase their size and provide a better product to more people. In the age of crony capitalism and “too big to fail” that paradigm is dead and all we get is bloated corporations providing ever worsening service.
I think the CEO’s decision was based mostly on politics.
That’s what all the insurance company CEO’s think is going to happen.
Sadly, they’ll probably get it (with a lot of GOP support).
Eunuchs.
A Faustian bargain?
Thx,
S.
Imagine how those Americans feel who lost their insurance and were forced into the ObamaRat clown show so the boy could have his “wildly popular” legacy. Suckers!
Hey,
At least I knew it was not Unix.
D.
Isn’t United Healthcare what the AARP was flogging for Obamcare?
UnitedHealth CEO Stephen Hemsley is the dumbest human being on the planet, bar none.
You wrote it.
You lobbied for it.
You cheered its passage as a boon for shareholders.
The shareholders cheered as well.
I am not for ObamaCare reform.
Live with your choices, like you forced on us, to satiate your greed at the expense of others.
Is it a failure if it was intended to fail?
United is one of the largest health insurers and is AARPs source of income. They lobbied for Obama to get the law passed. Without them, the law would not have passed. Hope the go bankrupt.
Really?
The board approved and brought experts to bear on this “most important issue of our time” and to ensure “thus right was passed”.
They really are co-conspirators and probably had the dirt needed to help Roberts form such a ridiculous reasoning in support of their agenda.
Good. These creep insurance execs thought they’d be on the gravy train...aside from their hatred of a Free Market. This bum should be fired for his bad decision. I hope he and his family lose their insurance. What a degenerate.
Sure do. He’s mentioned in the top 15 emails of hitlery in Politico... as being a “friend” she could consult on her little “fall” and probable stroke. Frist-— part of the medical industrial complex and so-called “conservative” pal of the the two moron senators of TN Alexander and Corker. Sure he’s and adequate surgeon, but it pays a lot better to run a govt. paid parking lot for patients with marginal care results. Or, at least it did until obamaumaocare.
All part of the “sell” for this debacle. Greedy big Pharma, greedy Big Insurance, and greedy lobbyists and ‘experts’. Everybody at the trough. And the trough can’t be filled except with subsidy and driving up premiums. The point was really, however, to use Cloward Piven, and put the system out of commission... to force.... single pay crap healthcare— and copy the disaster that is the NHS in the UK.
Obamacare ii - single payer.
Stephen Hemsley ...is an idiot.
Truth is ... there is NO marketplace. This is a fiction, and only greed drove these insurance mavens to rush in, and also— lest we forget, to bank the subsidy payment of premiums.
Sorry bucko. You signed on with Homobama to screw America.
Eat your peas.
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