Count it as another nail in ObamaCare's coffin: Humana, one of the country's top insurers, announced Thursday that it's pulling out of ObamaCare exchange plans in most but a few states next year.
It will offer policies in “no more” than 11 state marketplaces, down from 19. The numbers don't add up: Humana took nearly $1 billion in losses in the coverage this season.
This follows the exit in the exchanges of such other giants as Cigna and UnitedHealth Group, also after outsized losses.
It's the much-feared “death spiral”: A lot of older, sicker people are relying on ObamaCare policies, and not enough younger, healthy folks. Therefore the average enrollee is running up higher bills than the insurers expected – and raising rates is only going to scare away even more lower-cost customers.
Meanwhile, the Obama Justice Department is moving to bar health-insurer mergers – including an Anthem-Cigna deal in addition to Aetna's bid to buy Humana. Why? As The Post's Josh Kosman reports, the “move would be a blow towards the president's state-focused ObamaCare.”
The White House fears the mergers would give the combined firms an excessive amount of capacity to set rates, limiting consumer options.
Funny: The ObamaCare law encourages all anti-competition mergers, of hospitals along with other providers, within the name of “efficiency.” And doctors across America are giving up on traditional independent practices – as the law pushes these to do.
And countless people stuck buying policies on the exchanges have been shocked at how limited their options – like selection of doctor and hospital – grow to be.
President Obama and Hillary Clinton both accustomed to pooh-pooh the thought of a “public option”: Government-run medical health insurance that's only a step from European-style socialized medicine. But ObamaCare's woes have pushed both to start suggesting it might be the only answer in the end.
The only answer, that's, besides replacing ObamaCare having a truly market-based system that also helps the less fortunate, but doesn't attempt to dictate from Washington.
If that sounds better to you, don't prefer any Democrats this November.
