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Aetna is sharply cutting its participation in Obamacare exchanges for 2017. The health insurer said it will offer individual Affordable Care Act exchange plans in just four states, down from 15 this year, in an effort to reduce its losses. "As a strong supporter of public exchanges as a means to meet the needs of the uninsured, we regret having to make this decision," Chairman and CEO Marc Bertolini said in a statement. The insurance giant says it will offer ACA exchange plans in Delaware, Iowa, Nebraska and Virginia, slashing its Obamacare footprint by 70 percent next year. It will...

Blue Shield of California (BSC) will be shutting down for four days following Labor Day weekend as a way to stop the financial bleeding resulting from losses in “Covered California,” the state’s Obamacare exchange program. The change will “affect most of [BSC’s] 6,000 employees in California,” the San Francisco Business Times reports, although the “exact number of workers involved hasn’t yet been tabulated.” But BSC hopes that the move could save “an estimated $4 million.” According to the Times, BSC spokesman Steve Shivinsky said, “This is certainly not normal for us. We’re definitely seeing some income challenges as of mid-year.”

After the Affordable Care Act took effect in 2010, it created a review mechanism intended to prevent exorbitant increases in health insurance rates by shaming companies that sought them. But this summer, insurers are turning that process on its head, using it to highlight the reasons they are losing money under the health care law and their case for raising premiums in 2017. That has ignited an election-year fight between insurers and consumers, who are complaining bitterly about the double-digit increases being sought across the country. The conflicts have been on vivid display at hearings in states like Pennsylvania, where...

The health insurance exchanges that are the beating heart of Obamacare are on the edge of collapse, with premiums rising sharply for ever narrower provider networks, non-profit health co-ops shuttering their doors, and even the biggest insurance companies heading for the exits amid mounting losses. Even the liberal Capitol Hill newspaper is warning of a possible “Obamacare meltdown” this fall. Three states — Alaska, Alabama, and Wyoming — are already down to just a single insurance company, as are large parts of several other states, totaling at least 664 counties. UnitedHealth is pulling out completely, Humana is pulling out of...

Gigantic losses put exchanges on the brink, send program careening into chaos Remember when everyone watching ObamaCare was focused on how many people had signed up? First they needed 7 million, then 11 million, and on it went as new targets replaced the old. These weren’t meaningless - at least it didn’t appear that way. The targets represented the critical mass the Obama Administration itself said the program needed to be economically sustainable. Insurance, they told us, is about risk pools. If you’ve got enough people in the risk pool, you’d have enough premiums being paid in to cover those...

Humana, one of the largest health care providers in the country, has made the decision to eventually leave the vast majority of the Obamacare markets. Out of the 23 Obamacare co-ops that were established only seven remain, virtually all of them under threat of folding by the end of this year.

UnitedHealth is exiting California's Obamacare exchange as part of its exodus from the law's individual marketplaces. The state's Obamacare exchange, Covered California, told Kaiser Health News on Tuesday that the largest U.S. insurer is leaving the entire individual market in the state. Obamacare comprises a majority of the individual market, which is for people who don't get insurance through their job. UnitedHealth has been in the exchange for only about a year and has about 1,200 enrollees. Covered California had more than 425,000 people enroll overall in the latest open enrollment period. Earlier this year, UnitedHealth announced it was leaving...

Big health plans stung by losses in the first few years of the U.S. health law’s implementation are seeking hefty premium increases for individual plans sold through insurance exchanges in more than a dozen states. The insurers’ proposed rates for individual coverage in states that have made their 2017 requests public largely bear out health plans’ grim predictions about their challenges under the health-care overhaul. According to the insurers’ filings with regulators, large plans in states including New York, Pennsylvania and Georgia are seeking to raise rates by 20% or more. In states such as Florida and Maryland, insurers are...

Health Care: The insurance industry must be kicking itself for backing ObamaCare. Several have since posted big losses and it looks like Blue Cross Blue Shield got the losing end of the stick, too.

Political uncertainty isn't the only threat to the Affordable Care Act's future. Cracks also are spreading through a major pillar supporting the law. Health insurance exchanges created to help millions of people find coverage are turning into money-losing ventures for many insurers. The nation's largest, UnitedHealth Group Inc., could lose as much as $475 million on its exchange business this year and may not participate in 2017. Another major insurer, Aetna, has questioned the viability of the exchanges. And a dozen nonprofit insurance cooperatives created by the law have already closed, forcing around 750,000 people to find new plans. More...

Minuteman Health has drawn down $100 million in federal loans in anticipation of continued losses from the Affordable Care Act. The Massachusetts co-op insurer, which also operates in New Hampshire, will report the draw down and a second-consecutive year of operating losses as part of its fiscal 2015 financials. Minuteman officials said the borrowings are needed to offset certain components of Obamacare, which financially punish insurers for doing the very things the federal law was intended to address: to provide affordable health insurance to previously uncovered segments of the population. What ObamaCare's architects didn't anticipate, and what local insurers are...

Pennsylvania doctors say they will be forced to pay the price for what they deem poor business decisions that caused health insurer Highmark to lose hundreds of millions on customers covered as a result of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. Highmark recently notified doctors it will cut their payments by 4.5 percent for medical care provided to people covered by Obamacare plans. Highmark's 2015 loss on Obamacare plans, which still isn't finalized, is expected to reach about $500 million. Highmark attributes the Obamacare losses to new customers who may not have previously had insurance, and who turned out to...

**SNIP** Desperate to keep insurers on board, the administration scrambled to find another source of money. Unfortunately, a big part of that money pot belongs to the public. Disregarding that fact, the administration announced on Feb. 12 that the money will be handed out to insurers - a whopping $7.7 billion this year alone. That huge handout to the insurance industry violates the law. This is money you and everyone else who already has insurance is forced to pay, called a reinsurance fee. You pay the fee whether you buy your own plan or get covered at work, even if...

UnitedHealthcare and Aetna insurers are losing billions trying to sell ObamaCare plans. In 2014, the WH tried to avert disaster by promising insurers a taxpayer-funded bailout, but public outrage and quick action by Sen Marco Rubio put a stop to it. Desperate to keep insurers on board, they are now dipping into public money. On Feb. 12, the administration announced a whopping $7.7 billion to insurers, just this year alone....money taken from reinsurance fees....paid whether you buy your own plan or get covered at work, or if employer self-insures..... the fee is buried in your premium or taken out of...

The Obama administration will tell any lie and break any law to prevent the president’s signature health-care program from collapsing. Insurance companies such as UnitedHealthcare and Aetna are losing billions trying to sell ObamaCare plans, and the risk is they’ll drop out at the end of 2016. No insurance companies means no ObamaCare. In 2014, the White House tried to avert that disaster by promising insurers a taxpayer-funded bailout, but public outrage and quick action by Sen. Marco Rubio put a stop to it. Now the administration is at it again. Desperate to keep insurers on board, the administration scrambled...

The nation’s largest health insurer fired a shot across the bow of ObamaCare on Thursday, citing flagging enrollment and high-risk customers in suggesting it may have to pull out of the exchanges in 2017. UnitedHealth Group raised the alarm in an earnings update Thursday morning, with CEO Stephen J. Hemsley warning of dimming conditions in the market. He pointed to lower enrollment forecasts and a concern that the exchanges are increasingly taking on less healthy – and therefore more costly – customers. “In recent weeks, growth expectations for individual exchange participation have tempered industrywide, co-operatives have failed, and market data...

In short order, Obamacare is evolving into a Medicaid marketplace. Not only in terms of the design and quality of the narrow-network plans that are being offered, but in the actual carriers that sell those policies. Obamacare’s costly regulations mean that the mix of people who sign up are tending to be older and sicker. Many young and otherwise healthy individuals continue to be priced out of the exchanges, even after the benefit of federal subsidies are baked into their costs. Meanwhile, it’s the Medicaid managed care companies that are growing the number of plans they market on the exchanges....

The New York Times reported this weekend, even the words “affordable” and “care” have turned out to be untrue as well. The sharp rise in premiums has garnered the most headlines in the first three open-enrollment seasons of Obamacare, but equally if not more pernicious has been the increase in deductibles. As Eric Pianin explained for The Fiscal Times on Monday, deductibles have increased an average of 11 percent on Bronze level plans for 2016, intended to be the most affordable of all options, and now average over $5700. For Silver level, deductibles rose 6 percent and now average over...

A threat by the nation's largest health insurer to pull out of ObamaCare is a sign of the industry's growing angst about the viability of the federal exchanges, sources close to the industry say. UnitedHealthcare's warning sent new shockwaves across the healthcare sector after weeks of mounting anxiety among private insurers whose participation in the exchanges is critical to the viability of the president's signature law. In the last month alone, insurers have learned that the Obama administration has significantly lowered its expectations for new customers and will have far fewer federal dollars to help cushion insurer losses. "We've been...

UnitedHealth Group, the largest insurance company in the U.S., on Thursday slashed its earnings outlook, citing new problems related to Obamacare, and told investors it may exit the program's exchanges. "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," Stephen J. Hemsley, chief executive officer of UnitedHealth Group, explained in a press release. The release added that, "UnitedHealthcare has pulled back on its marketing efforts for individual exchange products in 2016. The company is evaluating the viability...