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Two weeks ago we reported that after its November warning that it may exit certain Obamacare markets as a result of substantial losses, the largest U.S. health insurer UnitedHealth, did just that when it announced it would no longer sell plans for next year in Georgia and Arkansas. Then over the weekend, UnitedHealth also added Michigan to the list of states whose Obamacare market it would no longer service. As Bloomberg reported, "the insurer won’t sell policies through Michigan’s ACA exchange for next year, according to Andrea Miller, a spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Insurance and Financial Services. Georgia...

The nation’s biggest health insurer has decided to stop selling coverage on public insurance exchanges in two states for next year, but consumers shouldn’t take this as an early warning that a mass exodus is brewing from a key element of the Affordable Care Act’s coverage expansion.Analysts say these exchanges may be improving for insurers after a difficult start. However, they also expect insurers to continue leaving some unprofitable markets as the coverage expansion heads toward its fourth year. UnitedHealth Group Inc. said it will not sell coverage on exchanges in Arkansas and Georgia for 2017, and it is continuing...

Who gets paid first when an ObamaCare co-op goes belly up: the doctors and hospitals that cared for co-op enrollees or the federal government, which caused the co-op mess in the first place? If the Obama administration has it way, Uncle Sam will be at the head of the line to recoup losses, quite possibly leaving healthcare providers in the lurch, reported the Daily Caller.

An official with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services told lawmakers last week that eight of the 11 remaining Obamacare co-ops have been selected for "corrective action plans" and "enhanced oversight." Twenty-three co-ops were created under the president's health care overhaul, and so far more than half have collapsed and are no longer selling plans in the marketplace. The 12 co-ops that went out of business operated in Arizona, Michigan, Utah, Kentucky, New York, Nevada, Louisiana, Oregon, Colorado, Tennessee, South Carolina and a co-op serving Iowa and Nebraska. The agency's chief operating officer, Dr. Mandy Cohen, told the House...

Minuteman Health has drawn down $100 million in federal loans in anticipation of continued losses from the Affordable Care Act. The Massachusetts co-op insurer, which also operates in New Hampshire, will report the draw down and a second-consecutive year of operating losses as part of its fiscal 2015 financials. Minuteman officials said the borrowings are needed to offset certain components of Obamacare, which financially punish insurers for doing the very things the federal law was intended to address: to provide affordable health insurance to previously uncovered segments of the population. What ObamaCare's architects didn't anticipate, and what local insurers are...

Political uncertainty isn't the only threat to the Affordable Care Act's future. Cracks also are spreading through a major pillar supporting the law. Health insurance exchanges created to help millions of people find coverage are turning into money-losing ventures for many insurers. The nation's largest, UnitedHealth Group Inc., could lose as much as $475 million on its exchange business this year and may not participate in 2017. Another major insurer, Aetna, has questioned the viability of the exchanges. And a dozen nonprofit insurance cooperatives created by the law have already closed, forcing around 750,000 people to find new plans. More...

Yes, yes. I know. Only a RINO or a (Trumphradites may insert preferred epithet for thinking Republicans here) would claim that the House omnibus spending bill contains anything conservatives can applaud. It does, nonetheless, include such a provision. As Ronald Reagan (who signed several omnibus bills himself) famously said, facts are stubborn things. And one of the most intransigent facts about this bill is that it imposes a deadly dose of fiscal restraint on Obamacare. It requires the law's risk corridor program to remain budget neutral. This is far more dangerous to the Affordable Care Act than most observers realize....

The lone health insurance cooperative to make money last year on the Affordable Care Act's public insurance exchanges is now losing millions and suspending individual enrollment for 2016. Maine's Community Health Options lost more than $17 million in the first nine months of this year, after making $10.9 million in the same period last year. A spokesman said higher-than-expected medical costs have hurt the cooperative.

Until the 19th century, the Chinese practiced a method of torture called lingchi. Better known as “death by a thousand cuts” it involved slicing small pieces of flesh from a victim’s body, one by one, so that death was both protracted and utterly excruciating. This is what the realities of economics are doing to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The authors of health care “reform” believed they could ignore the dismal science. The laws of economics have rewarded this hubris by ruthlessly inflicting fact after agonizing fact on Obamacare. And, like all lingchi victims, it will eventually succumb....

The nation’s largest health insurer fired a shot across the bow of ObamaCare on Thursday, citing flagging enrollment and high-risk customers in suggesting it may have to pull out of the exchanges in 2017. UnitedHealth Group raised the alarm in an earnings update Thursday morning, with CEO Stephen J. Hemsley warning of dimming conditions in the market. He pointed to lower enrollment forecasts and a concern that the exchanges are increasingly taking on less healthy – and therefore more costly – customers. “In recent weeks, growth expectations for individual exchange participation have tempered industrywide, co-operatives have failed, and market data...

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) said Thursday that he is not satisfied with a new letter from the Obama administration about ObamaCare co-ops, and is continuing to block the confirmation of health-related nominees. The Nebraska senator has vowed to block confirmation of all nominees to the Department of Health and Human Services until he gets the answers he wants about the failure of ObamaCare’s co-op health plans. Twelve of the 23 co-ops — nonprofit health insurers set up under ObamaCare and meant to compete with established companies — have failed because of financial problems. Sasse has written a series of letters...

**SNIP** The statement said "a subsequent NYDFS and CMS-led review of Health Republic's finances has found that the company's financial condition is substantially worse than the company previously reported in its filings to NYDFS." The statement provided no further details on the new discoveries regarding the co-op, which received the largest single federal loan under the Obamacare health reform law. In addition to its original $265 million, the co-op received another $90 million in an emergency solvency loan funds from federal officials in September 2014. The co-op previously reported it was burning through money at a disastrous rate. Its 2014...

Two weeks ago we reported that in what at the time was still a rather isolated incident, Colorado's largest nonprofit health insurer (aka co-op), Colorado HealthOP is abruptly shutting down, forcing 80,000 Coloradans to find a new insurer for 2016. At the time, we said that the health insurer had been decertified by the Division of Insurance as an eligible insurance company because the cooperative relied on federal support, and federal authorities announced last month they wouldn't be able to pay most of what they owed in a program designed to help health insurance co-ops get established. In other words,...

Gannett, so link only: http://www.pressconnects.com/story/news/local/new-york/2015/10/29/dead-entolled-health-exchange/74807200/

Link only: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-29/your-health-plan-will-now-self-destruct

The government program to reimburse insurance companies with big losses as a result of signing up too many old and sick customers is massively short of funds and could cause some companies to either go under or get out of the Obamacare exchanges. The so-called "risk corridors" that forced profitable companies to pay into a fund that would be disbursed to companies who lost money is underfunded by 88% and will almost certainly lead to big changes in premiums and consumer choice on the exchanges. Washington Examiner: Obamacare insurers requested about $2.9 billion in risk corridor payments for the...

Anthem, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield (BCBS) licensee in Wisconsin, has decided to completely pull out of the health care exchange (individual plans) market place in Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha counties starting January. Anthem is also significantly cutting back on the number of available exchange plans in 34 Wisconsin counties, which include the Fox Valley, according to Scott Larrivee, Public Relations Director at Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Wisconsin. “Anthem individual members in these [Milwaukee, Kenosha and Racine] counties will need to select a new health insurance plan with a different company for 2016,” Larrivee said, noting...

**SNIP** About $4.6 billion was given to these 17 recipients, including California, New York, Washington state and Kentucky. But the GAO report found that so far, just $1.4 billion of that has been spent on IT projects, and a total of $3 billion has been “spent or drawn down,” though not all the spending is detailed. That, then, leaves at least $1.6 billion unaccounted for. Yet only three states returned any portion of the money – a total of just over $1 million was given back. “[T]he specific amount spent on marketplace-related projects was uncertain, as only a selected number...

Federal officials have a secret list of 11 Obamacare health insurance co-ops they fear are on the verge of failure, but they refuse to disclose them to the public or to Congress, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation has learned.Just in the last three weeks, five of the original 24 Obamacare co-ops announced plans to close, bringing the total of failures to nine barely two years after their launch with $2 billion in start-up capital from the taxpayers under the Affordable Care Act.All 24 received 15-year loans in varying amounts to offer health insurance to poor and low income customers...

Last week, the total number of failed ObamaCare-created insurance co-ops reached eight, as co-ops in Colorado and Oregon announced that they were closing doors at the end of the year.