The Patriot Post® · UnitedHealth Announces Retreat From ObamaCare

Before a meeting of investors Tuesday, UnitedHealth’s CEO Stephen Hemsley announced the largest provider of health insurance will continue to distance itself from the ObamaCare system. Not only was it retreating from the exchanges in Georgia and Alabama, the company planned to provide coverage “in only a handful of states” by 2017.

No word yet on which states UnitedHealth will abandon, but a study released Kaiser Family Foundation shows that UnitedHealth’s decision will result in less competition and increased premiums, perhaps not in the short-term, but over time. “If United were to withdraw from all states,” Kaiser’s report read, “532 counties would go from having three insurers to two, while another 536 counties would go from having two insurers to just one. … Combining these counties with the 1,121 counties that already had one or two insurers would mean that just over half (53%) of U.S. counties would have one or two exchanges insurers.”

Granted, UnitedHealth only provides insurance 6% of ObamaCare users, but UnitedHealth isn’t the only insurance company in the red, either. Companies like Aetna and Anthem are also losing money. It all illustrates that if an insurance company cannot make money in a system that requires people to buy its product, the system is nearing a tipping point.