UnitedHealth Losing its Shirt, Forced to Exit Obamacare

The largest health insurer in the country, UnitedHealth has announced that they will be exiting from most ObamaCare exchanges in 2017 after admitting to losing $1 billion.

The healthcare provider projects that the losses for 2016 will be closer to $650 million versus their previous projection of $525 million.

UnitedHealth’s CEO Stephen Hemsley stated 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” to the Associated Press. “Next year, we will remain in only a handful of states, and we will not carry financial exposure from exchanges into 2017.”

Last November it looked like the company was ready to exit all Obamacare exchanges, but as Hemsley stated they will still remain in a “handful” of states. However, it is official that the company will be pulling out of Arkansas, Michigan and Kansas.

According to a study done by the Kaiser Family Foundation, if UnitedHealth was to pull out of every ACA exchange, a whopping 1.1 million ObamaCare customers would only have one option of healthcare to pick from.

Not to mention, other big health insurance companies are reporting major losses from participating in ACA exchanges. So, it is just a matter of time that companies like Aetna exit too. Aetna already plans to limit its ACA exchange participation in 2017.

The Hill recently reported that Blue Cross Blue Shield is another to “have also raised the prospect of dropping off the marketplaces.”

Cigna is one of the few companies staying in the ACA exchanges in seven states and the company plans to “selectively expand” in 2017.

The Obama administration refuses to see what a loss UnitedHealth is by stating the company is a “fairly small player on the ObamaCare marketplaces.” Again, they are the largest healthcare provider in the country and have expanded to 34 states.

Luckily, UnitedHealth is thriving in other product lines and plans to make comeback from its ObamaCare losses.

You would think that Obama would see this as another major failure of the outrageously expensive Obamacare project. Besides the website being a glitchy system, there are strict guidelines making it difficult for customers to sign up. To make matters worse, there are plans to rewrite the Affordable Care Act again, which will only make it even more challenging for users to sign up. And the cherry on the cake? Premiums are evidently going to increase in 2017.

Over the years, the options on exchanges have been dwindling, while becoming more expensive for less coverage. This is because companies are trying to recover from the losses, but soon there won’t be any plans left.

With more major healthcare providers pulling out from exchanges, this could finally be the end of ObamaCare.