The Obamacare wrecking ball is causing the nation’s largest health care provider to weigh pulling out of the Obamacare exchange program, which will spell very bad news for customers:
From Washington Examiner:
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.
In other words:
Insurers have had trouble signing up young and healthy individuals on the Obamacare exchanges, which is necessary to offset the costs of covering older and sicker enrollees. This has forced insurers to hike premiums, raise deductibles, and slash the number of doctors and hospitals offered on its plans. Meanwhile, the Obama administration has cut its enrollment expectations for 2016 to about half of what they were when the the legislation became law.
So what will this mean if insurance companies being pulling out?
If UnitedHealth and other insurers decide to exit, remaining insurers will be forced to take on even more high-risk enrollees, prompting them to either raise rates further or exit themselves. That in turn would deprive individuals of choices and remove competition, a key purpose of the exchanges.
In other words Obamacare would implode, forcing the government to step in and save it. Let’s just hope we have a Conservative president and conservative leaning Congress before that happens, so they can fix it correctly and be done with this socialist health care madness.