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USA defends Obamacare after top insurer threatens pullout

It also cut its 2015 earnings forecast.

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Open enrollment for 2016 has already started, and the plans are being sold, so it’s too late to quit for next year’s coverage.

Shares of Aetna Inc., Anthem Inc. and UnitedHealth all are climbing in premarket trading.

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”. In its third quarter conference call last month, Anthem lowered its guidance for profits next year below analysts’ expectations, citing lower-than-expected enrollments through the exchanges, among other things. “I don’t think those patients are a whole lot different from those who come to us during open enrollment”, he said. The company is now expecting EPS of $6 in the current year, which was down from their earlier range of $6.25 – $6.35.

UnitedHealthcare’s worries about its future in the government marketplace does not signal more serious problems with health care reform, said Sabrina Corlette, senior research professor at the Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms.

The Connector is dominated by local, nonprofit insurers, including Neighborhood Health Plan, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, and Tufts Health Plan.

Still, a few investors worry more insurers could eventually follow UnitedHealth and pull back from exchanges because they can’t make a profit due to pricing trends in the business.

UnitedHealth expects to book an operating loss of slightly more than $700 million this year, largely from its exchange business. Mr. Gorman says the company should have waited at least four years to give the marketplaces time to stabilize.

The same article said the company estimates losses of more than $600 million from its exchange business, before taxes, in 2015 and 2016. Almost 1.1 million people have selected plans so far for 2016. But if the players realize sooner that the exchanges are not seeing profitable business opportunities, a mass exodus may happen which may hamper the functionality of the exchanges and cause a failure of the ObamaCare exchanges, thus defeating the basic aim of providing coverage to millions of uninsured Americans.

Dr. Molina also said he’d seen “no evidence at this point that there is adverse selection going on within our population”, meaning that the enrollees aren’t skewed toward older, sicker people who tend to need more health care.

UnitedHealth Group Inc (NYSE:UNH) might be pulling out from Obamacare. UnitedHealth wound up dropping 5.6 percent, or $6.57, to close at $110.68.

The reason, according to BCBSNC, is that healthier individuals are avoiding the government plans, which require them to pay for 10 areas of coverage even when, as in the case of men being required to insure against pregnancy, they have no exposure to medical risk.

“This year, people looking for coverage in the marketplace continue to have a robust number of plan choices and as the data shows the marketplace is stable, vibrant and a growing source of coverage for new consumers”.

But one insurance expert said UnitedHealth’s statements are evidence that the Obama administration needs to adjust the ACA if the program is to remain a viable option for both insurers and for customers.

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“The reality is we continue to see more people signing up for health insurance and more issuers entering the marketplaces”, Ben Wakana, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, said by e-mail.

Consumer sits with insurance agent as she picks an insurance plan available in the third year of the Affordable Care Act