UnitedHealth Group Inc (NYSE:UNH) might be pulling out from Obamacare. Hemsley believes the plans could slash as much as $575 million from the bottom line this year and next.
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“We can not sustain these losses”, Hemsley said. Democrats could also face pressure if UnitedHealth and other players depart the exchanges because less competition could mean higher insurance premiums.
“[UnitedHealth] is evaluating the viability of the insurance exchange product segment and will determine during the first half of 2016 to what extent it can continue to serve the public exchange markets in 2017”, UnitedHealth said in a statement.
But more than half of the non-profit insurance cooperatives have already departed the program this year, and observers say such a decision by UnitedHealth would leave many Americans without access to what is one of the more affordable plans available.
“We’re not trying to be all things to all people”, he said. “I don’t think those patients are a whole lot different from those who come to us during open enrollment”, he said.
“We see this as a temporary headwind that will be rectified through market exits by health plans for 2017 or through policy changes”, Gupte wrote.
The nation’s largest health insurer UnitedHealth said Thursday it is having serious doubts about participating in Obamacare.
With less than a year before the US presidential election, Goldman Sachs analyst Matthew Borsch wrote that the health of the exchanges “may ultimately have significant policy and political implications”. As some experts note, if the biggest healthcare company can’t make ObamaCare work, you know that others must be struggling even more.
America’s Health Insurance Plans, which lobbies on behalf of the industry, said Thursday that the USA needs to do more to improve the marketplaces.
UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s largest health insurer, announced Thursday that it has reduced its earnings expectations for 2015, and projected a similar initial outlook for 2016.
Aetna Inc. CEO Mark Bertolini agrees with Gorman, telling analysts last month that his company still sees exchanges as an opportunity and it was “way to early to call it quits”, according to AP.
ObamaCare has turned into a bait-and-switch scheme leaving many insurers in the red rather than with a windfall of profitable new patients.
The disclosure comes less than three weeks after the president of the company’s IL insurance operations expressed optimism about its exchange-related business going into next year.
The Obama administration encourages shopping for health insurers each enrollment period to avoid higher premiums, but switching plans is beginning to seem like an unwelcome annual ritual.
The same article said the company estimates losses of more than $600 million from its exchange business, before taxes, in 2015 and 2016.
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The Connector is dominated by local, nonprofit insurers, including Neighborhood Health Plan, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, and Tufts Health Plan. They also didn’t know whether the new business would attract enough healthy customers to balance the expected enrollment of sicker customers who had previously not been able to find coverage. And Kaiser Permanente, which has about 450,000 individual exchange customers across eight states and Washington, D.C., said it’s “strongly committed” to the marketplaces.
