If the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump has taught us anything it is that the federal government is a good punching bag and scapegoat. Yesterday, Aetna Chief Executive Officer, Mark Bertolini, took some time on the bag. Bertolini announced that the company “decided to reduce our individual public exchange presence in 2017.” Aetna will pull out of 11 states on the public exchanges but continue to sell individual policies off of the exchanges. The reasons provided for the pull out, in insurance-speak, were an unbalanced risk pool and “inadequate risk adjustment mechanism.”

What Aetna means by “an unbalanced risk pool.” Put plainly, Aetna did not sell enough policies to healthy people with low to no health care expenses to cover the cost of care for the unhealthy people it sold policies to.

What Aetna means by “inadequate risk adjustment mechanism.” The Affordable Care Act risk adjustment programs are technical. There is a state-based risk adjustment and reinsurance program and a federal risk corridor program. Basically, these programs give money to, take it away from or share it among insurance companies to balance out their losses and gains.

Is It Really The Governments Fault…?

Aetna stated that, it might return to the exchanges in the future, “should there be meaningful exchange-related policy improvements.” This shameless blaming of a federal program to increase access to health insurance is a disguise to hide Aetna’s incompetence at predicting and managing risks. Aetna has a history of not anticipating changes in the health care market and of dropping unprofitable policyholders. Continue Reading...

Tags: obamacare, public exchanges, Aetna