MedPage Today, a news aggregator for physicians, links to this FoxNews spew about United Health Care insurance company.
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.
United Health 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 industry-wide, co-operatives have failed, and market data has signaled higher risks and more difficulties while our own claims experience has deteriorated,” he said in a statement.
As the company cut its earnings outlook, it also announced it was pulling back on marketing for the ObamaCare exchanges in 2016 and said it would make a decision on the exchanges in the middle of next year.
The fact that United Health was looking for a friendly takeover by Aetna earlier in the year says it may be financially shaky and is using the Obamacare excuse to cover its own fiscal missteps. It appears other insurance companies are not in trouble and continue to be happy to keep on gouging customers through untoward premium hikes for 2016. More pressure on the ability of private individuals (and work place provided plans) to keep up with the greed of the insurance racket may force the Medicare for All meme to gain traction no matter if Sanders wins the presidency or not.