Aetna chief executive says Obamacare is in a ‘death spiral’Washington Post, Feb 15, 2017,
Aetna chief executive Mark Bertolini said Wednesday that the Affordable Care Act's exchanges — the marketplaces where consumers can buy individual health coverage under President Barack Obama's signature health-care law — are in a “death spiral.”
Bertolini's remarks at the Wall Street Journal's the Future of Healthcare event came a day after the official end of his company's proposed merger with the health insurer Humana — a divorce that will cost Aetna a $1 billion breakup fee. It also came a day after Humana announced that it would pull out of all of its remaining ACA exchanges for 2018, arguing that the risk pool was unbalanced because not enough healthy people were signing up for insurance compared with the number of sick people.
“That logic shows just how much the risk pool is deteriorating in the ACA and how poorly structured the funding mechanism and premium model is,” Bertolini said. “I think you will see a lot more withdrawals this year of plans.”
Bertolini said his company has not decided whether to continue selling insurance in the exchanges in 2018, but it already has exited most of the markets where it previously sold plans, remaining in only four states this year. He pointed out that Aetna is the only insurer left in Nebraska's public exchange.
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