UnitedHealthcare is a major broker in Colorado’s health insurance system, offering plans both in and out of the Obamacare exchange. “Enhanced/SecCapsule.aspx?c=130104&fid=10422667″>backed their 2015 earnings forecasts.
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“There are a bunch of people eligible for these plans that don’t value having insurance enough to pay what they’d have to pay”, Hempstead said.
That, many worry, could represent the tip of the iceberg for an industry still waiting to see if Obamacare, which aims to extend health care coverage to millions more Americans at cheaper rates, works as planned. Until that happens, analysts predict that it will take a number of years before the exchanges become viable.
“The market still needs to mature”, he said. “That’s the lesson here”.
The type of coverage also may change.
‘We continue to see more people signing up for health insurance and more issuers entering the marketplaces, ‘ HHS Spokesman Ben Wakana said in a statement distributed to news outlets Thursday.
CEO Joseph Swedish said in a statement that the insurer remains committed to the business and “continuing our dialogue with policymakers and regulators regarding how we can improve the stability of the individual market”.
An Aetna spokesperson told USA TODAY on Friday that the CFO’s remarks remain representative of the company’s outlook. Also, government payments to mitigate the costs of insuring sicker-than-expected members are declining and will be mostly phased out after next year.
Cox said it’s too soon to judge how the exchanges will play out, especially since those who aren’t buying plans won’t learn until they file taxes in 2017 that the penalties have grown substantially. The insurer has been hurt in particular by customers who signed up for coverage outside the open-enrollment window and use more health care in general than those who bought coverage during open enrollment. The company has come to the decision as it was losing millions of dollars because of the program.
“We can not sustain these losses”, he said.
Western Pennsylvania’s biggest health insurer has no plans to pull out of the government’s online health insurance marketplace, despite being reimbursed for only a fraction of its losses sustained past year in the online marketplace. The firm may drop as many as 500,000 Obamacare policies in 2017.
In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Friday, insurance giant Aetna (AET) confirmed that it expects to meet its full-year operating earnings targets, suggesting that the company is not absorbing the kinds of losses that UnitedHealth blamed for its reconsideration of Obamacare.
Anthem said last month that 2016 would be a challenging year on the exchanges, where it has about 824,000 customers, and that the business would drag on profit. He also said the company’s forecast for 2016 earnings ranging from $7.10 to $7.30 per share would have been higher. That will help it set the right prices for future coverage.
But Hemsley said patients are using their plans more than the company had expected and dropping coverage when they’re healthy, slamming profits.
Analysts forecast, on average, 2015 earnings of $7.55 per share for Aetna and $10.20 per share for Anthem.
Still, UnitedHealth’s exchange membership trails that of its rivals and represents only about 6% of the 9.1 million people who have gotten their insurance through the marketplaces in 2015. Indianapolis-based Anthem Inc. sank almost 7 percent, or $9.50, to $127.86. Shutterstock.com Aetna’s world headquarters in Hartford, Connecticut.
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Broader indexes fell slightly.
