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Aetna Inc., facing more than $300 million in losses from Affordable Care Act health plans this year, may exit Obamacare markets in some states as challenges to the health-care overhaul pile up. While the health insurer has yet to leave any states in which it now sells Obamacare programs, Chief Executive Officer Mark Bertolini said…

Usually it’s a good thing that everything’s bigger in Texas, but that isn’t true when it comes to health-insurance premiums for Obamacare. Recent federal data show that Texas’ largest insurer on the Obamacare exchanges is seeking average premium increases of nearly 60 percent for 2017- among the highest hikes in the entire country. As a…

Banning resident Jim Bailey and his wife went in recently for their annual physicals. They came away with hundreds of dollars in charges for co-pays and tests. Bailey, 78, told me that he feels duped. “The Affordable Care Act dictates that all annual physicals be provided at no cost to the policyholders — no deductibles…

Insurers want to crank up the cost of health insurance premiums by as much as 45 percent for Illinois residents who buy coverage through the Affordable Care Act’s marketplace. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois, the most popular insurer on the state’s Obamacare exchange, is proposing increases ranging from 23 percent to 45 percent in…

Two more health cooperatives have filed lawsuits against the Obama administration over a program in which insurers compensate each other for taking on sicker customers under the Affordable Care Act, following a similar lawsuit in June from another startup company. New Mexico Health Connections and Minuteman Health of Massachusetts filed their cases on Friday afternoon, arguing the…

The implementation of major legislation such as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) often results in fiscal outcomes that differ significantly from prior projections. Whenever this happens it leads to many questions, much confusion, and several claims and counter-claims. Rarely is it immediately clear whether the law is working differently than envisioned, or whether the unexpected…

In a Health Affairs article, Loren Adler and Paul Ginsburg from the Center for Health Policy at the Brookings Institution make the claim that Obamacare has lowered health insurance premiums. Adler and Ginsburg claim that, in 2014, premiums for the second-lowest cost “silver” plan were “between 10 and 21% lower than average individual market premiums in 2013,” the year…

Aetna Inc, the nation’s third largest health insurer, said on Tuesday that it no longer plans to expand its Obamacare business next year. The insurer, which is losing money on the plans it sells in 15 states to individuals on exchanges created under the Affordable Care Act, said it also was looking at whether it…

Health plans sold on Michigan’s insurance exchange could see an average 17.3% increase next year, and if recent history is any guide, state regulators could approve the insurance companies’ rate hike requests without many — if any — changes. The rate increases would mean a financial hit for taxpayers in general and the 345,000 Michiganders who buy their health insurance on the Healthcare.gov exchange, created under the Affordable Care Act,…

A sampling of the 2017 proposed rate increases:

Blue Care Network of Michigan is seeking an average 14.8% rate increase for its plans.

Blue Cross Blue Shield wants an 18.7% increase.

Priority Health has asked for a 13.9% rate hike.

The biggest rate request is from Humana — a 39.2% rise.

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