Obamacare Bleeding Out

[OldDog]

More Choices, Greater Competition -- Health Insurance Exchange
The proposal creates a new insurance marketplace that lets individuals and families without coverage and small business owners pool their resources and increase their buying power to make insurance more affordable. Private insurance companies will compete for business based on cost and quality and they’ll have to follow common-sense rules of the road that rein in the worst insurance industry abuses.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/health-ca...itlei/exchange

Yeah, it STILL says that.

In 2016, 85 percent of all Obamacare enrollees had three insurers from which to choose. In 2017, that number drops to 62 percent. This year, an estimated 300,000 enrollees had only one insurer available to them, which comprised only 2 percent of overall enrollment. Next year, 2017, that number will grow to 2.3 million – an estimated 19 percent of all enrollees, an eightfold increase. The same percentage will only have two choices, up from 12 percent in 2016.

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Column...onsumer-Choice

Aetna announced that it is pulling out of eleven of the 15 states where it currently sells products on the ACA’s exchanges because of continued large financial losses from these products. The company has lost $430 million since January 2014 on insurance plans sold through Obamacare, with more losses coming through the remainder of this year.

Other major national insurers have also pulled back substantially from their participation in the ACA. United Healthcare has lost $1.3 billion so far on the exchanges and will reduce its participation in the program from 34 states to just three in 2017. Humana is reducing its participation in the program from 19 to eleven states.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee estimates that it will have lost $500 million on the state’s exchange by the end of 2016. The insurer asked and received permission from the state’s insurance regulator to hike premiums 62 percent for 2017. The other major insurers in the state — Cigna and Humana — have received permission to raise premiums by 46 and 44 percent, respectively.
Texas Blue Cross has lost $1 billion on the ACA exchange in two years, and has asked for a 60 percent premium increase for 2017.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota has largely pulled out of the insurance exchange for 2017 because of $500 million in losses during the first three years. The Blues plan in North Carolina has lost $400 million on the ACA exchange and is currently evaluating whether to continue participating in the program in 2017 and beyond.

The average premium increase nationwide for plans offered on the ACA exchanges is 24 percent for 2017. In California, where premium growth for insurance plans offered on the state’s exchange was relatively modest in 2015 and 2016, the average increase for 2017 will be 13 percent.

The consulting firm McKinsey estimates that between 12 and 17 percent of exchange customers will be picking from plans offered by only one insurer in 2017.

http://www.aei.org/publication/a-pub...bly-the-point/

https://youtu.be/LAf0QnLFS7Q