Aetna Has Revealed Obamacare's Many Broken Promises

Michael F. Cannon | Time | August 25, 2016

The recent exodus of insurers shows we need more reliable affordable care

They’re dropping like flies. The health-insurance giant Aetna has announced it will exit 11 of the 15 health-insurance exchanges where it sells Obamacare plans. Aetna’s announcement comes on the heels of news that UnitedHealthcare, Humana, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Mexico, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, and Texas’ Scott and White Health Plan, and 70% of Obamacare’s failed Co-Ops, and other insurers will exit many or all of the exchanges for which they had previously shown such enthusiasm.

The ongoing and nationwide exodus of insurers is just the latest piece of evidence that Obamacare is a failed law built on false promises. Obamacare’s only real selling point was that it supposedly guarantees access to care for people with expensive illnesses. President Obama repeatedly boasted that under Obamacare, it will be illegal for insurance companies to deny coverage to the sick because “all discrimination against pre-existing conditions will be prohibited.” On the contrary, Obamacare itself is denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions.

Just ask the residents of Pinal County, Arizona, where Obamacare has driven every carrier out of the exchange, and may yet destroy the individual market outside the exchange. As it turns out, Obamacare does not prevent insurance companies from denying you coverage, dropping your coverage, or watering down your coverage. It does not prevent insurers from limiting your coverage. It does not prevent discrimination against the sick. All of these things happened in Pinal County—and not in spite of Obamacare, but because of it. Obamacare made covering everybody in the exchange prohibitively expensive, so insurers stopped covering anybody...