"Aetna to Obamacare: We're outta here"

[Stinky The Clown]

I'm sure there's nothing political at work here.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/10/news/economy/aetna-obamacare/

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. There's more to the story:

Insurers are generally citing two reasons for the exits or rate hikes. Policyholders are continuing to rack up bigger bills than their premiums cover, and insurers remain concerned about the uncertainty emanating from Washington D.C. Carriers are particularly worried about whether they'll continue to receive the cost-sharing subsidies that reduce premiums for lower-income consumers and whether the Trump administration will keep enforcing the individual mandate, which helps entice healthier people into the market.

"It's hard to say whether Aetna would have stayed in the market under different circumstances, but we are seeing a number of insurers expressing concern over the political and regulatory uncertainty they face next year," said Cynthia Cox, associate director at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

[The Wielding Truth]

2. Thank you, Marco Rubio.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/10/us/politics/marco-rubio-obamacare-affordable-care-act.html?_r=0

The attack stems from two years of effort by Senator Marco Rubio and others in Congress to undermine a key financing mechanism in the law. So for all the Republican talk about dismantling the Affordable Care Act, one Republican presidential hopeful has actually done something toward achieving that goal.

Mr. Rubio’s efforts against the so-called risk corridor provision of the health law have hardly risen to the forefront of the race for the Republican presidential nomination, but his plan limiting how much the government can spend to protect insurance companies against financial losses has shown the effectiveness of quiet legislative sabotage.

The risk corridors were intended to help some insurance companies if they ended up with too many new sick people on their rolls and too little cash from premiums to cover their medical bills in the first three years under the health law. But because of Mr. Rubio’s efforts, the administration says it will pay only 13 percent of what insurance companies were expecting to receive this year. The payments were supposed to help insurers cope with the risks they assumed when they decided to participate in the law’s new insurance marketplaces.