Well here is an honest twist to all the negativity we typically hear from the health insurance companies concerning their losses in the Health Insurance Marketplace.
Recently UnitedHealth said that it would stop offering individual policies through the Marketplaces next year citing losses. But don’t cry for UnitedHealth though, they are the largest writers of big group health plans and making big profits outside of the individual policies of the Marketplace.
Fortunately UnitedHealth is relatively small player in the Marketplaces.
One of the biggest Marketplace insurance companies is Aetna. In spite of also losing money in 2015 with its individual polices through the Marketplaces, Aetna’s CEO, Mark Bertolini, doesn’t expect that in 2016.
In fact Bertolini is defending the Obamcare Marketplaces as “a good investment”. It’s all about the cost of acquiring new policy holders. He estimates that Aetna would have had to spend $1.2 billion to get the 1.2 million policyholders it has through the Marketplaces. And Aetna’s losses were well below that figure for all of 2014 and 2015.
Now that’s looking at the whole business picture not just at start-up losses.