Hide Your Wallets: Obamacare wants your cash!

Obamacare is beginning to fall apart and the federal government is going to look to American taxpayers to fund putting it back together.

Last Wednesday United Healthcare announced it lost $425 million on its policies sold via the Affordable Care Act exchanges, and they might back out of selling individual health plans via the exchanges all together after 2016. The insurer’s withdrawal from the Obamacare exchanges would force 540,000 Americans to find coverage from another provider. 

On top of the United Healthcare news is the fact 12 out of the original 23 state-run exchanges have bitten the dust. If other big insurance companies follow United HealthCare out the door, the loss could potentially destabilize the entire individual marketplace.

And they just might. U.S. insurers had to absorb nearly $2.9 billion in unexpected medical expenses from their customers in Obamacare’s exchanges in 2014, according to new data from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Obamacare is killing the heath insurance industry, but help for health insurers is on the way – and it will be coming out the pockets of American taxpayers via higher insurance rates and a federal bailout.

“Many insurers have requested premium increases of 20% to 40% for next year,” reports the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal. “In August, Blue Cross Blue Shield secured approval in Tennessee for a 36.3% price hike, while Oregon OK’d a 25.6% increase for Moda Health Plan.”

The report continues: “Even these premium increases are mild compared with what’s coming when the risk corridor provision and other stopgaps expire. … A recent University of Minnesota study found that after 2016, the cheapest plans would experience some of the most dramatic premium increases. Families who purchased ‘bronze’ plans on the exchanges could see 45% increases. Some unlucky individuals could see their premiums shoot up 96%.”