Obamacare Schadenfreude - Shrinkage

Remember that 7 or 8 million enrollment? Maybe not so much: ObamaCare Enrollment Is Shrinking, Top Insurers Say

ObamaCare exchange statistics should clear up any doubt as to why the Obama Administration has been tight-lipped about enrollment since celebrating 8 million sign-ups in mid-April.

Reality, evidence suggests, could require quite a come-down from those lofty claims.

The nation's third-largest health insurer had 720,000 people sign up for exchange coverage as of May 20, a spokesman confirmed to IBD. At the end of June, it had fewer than 600,000 paying customers. Aetna expects that to fall to "just over 500,000" by the end of the year.

That would leave Aetna's paid enrollment down as much as 30% from that May sign-up tally.

"I think we will see some attrition ... We're already seeing it. And we expect that to continue through the end of the year," CEO Mark Bertolini said in a July 29 conference call.

Obamacare's beneficiaries are not, by and large, the relatively financially sensible people who took care of their own insurance. Getting them to sign up was hard enough; getting them to stay signed up may prove even more difficult.