First Aetna pulled out of Virginia’s Affordable Care Act insurance exchange. Then United Health did. Then Anthem cut back. Now Optima, a division of the Sentara Health Care system, is retracting to core markets in Hampton Roads plus the Harrisonburg, Charlottesville and Halifax-Mecklenburg areas. Oh, and it’s increasing rates on average by 81.8%.
“For now,” sums up the Daily Press, “it appears as if 48 Virginia counties and 15 cities have no insurer offering Obamacare coverage through the federal health care exchange. … The three insurers’ cuts leave 350,000 Virginians needing to find new coverage.”
While the health exchanges implode, a dysfunctional government in Washington, D.C., appears unable to devise either a patch to Obamacare or an alternative to it. Republicans are saying, in effect, “See, we told you that Obamacare was melting down.” Democrats are responding, “It’s melting down because you sabotaged it.”
As the system collapses, the issue of whom to blame will dominate the public discourse. It seems clear to me that Obamacare was melting down on its own, but the political uncertainty created by Washington dysfunction has accelerated the downward spiral. There’s so much flak and so much smoke, however, that Americans have no idea what to believe. In the meantime, Virginians will suffer.
