BREAKING: Aetna declares it will exit all Obamacare exchanges
by: Tracey Watson
NaturalNews.com
Monday, May 15, 2017
There is no doubt at this point that Obamacare is on life-support. As Republicans work hard behind the scenes to dismantle it completely, insurer Aetna Inc. announced this week that it will no longer be selling Obamacare plans in Delaware and Nebraska – the last two states in which it was still doing so.
“At this time have completely exited the exchanges,” Aetna said in a statement released May 10.
Though Aetna was initially one of the biggest players in the Obamacare exchanges, this announcement comes as no surprise.
At the end of 2016, Aetna announced that it would cut its participation in the exchanges by 70 percent, reducing the number of states it would sell individual Affordable Care Act plans in from 15 to just four. That decision was made as an effort to claw back some of the company’s losses, and came just two weeks after Aetna declared $200 million in pre-tax losses for the second quarter of that year.
“As a strong supporter of public exchanges as a means to meet the needs of the uninsured, we regret having to make this decision,” Marc Bertolini, Aetna’s CEO, said at the time.
Then, back in February, Bertolini criticized Obamacare’s markets, saying that with the increase in premiums, and more and more healthy individuals dropping out, they were on the brink of failure. In a video interview with the Wall Street Journal he went so far as to say that Obamacare was “in a death spiral.”
Chief Financial Officer Shawn Guertin indicated earlier this month that Aetna might withdraw from the exchanges completely to limit the financial hemorrhage that Obamacare has meant for the company. Even with representation in just four states, Aetna projects it will lose $200 million on individual health plans this year.
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