Big Blues Bailing on Obamacare?

Last week I reported that Blue Shield of Nebraska had pulled out of the Obamacare exchanges after having lost $140 million, expected to climb to $250 million by the end of 2017. Now Tennessee is seeing the Blues bailing on some of their biggest markets in the state:

Two Blue Cross plans made the stunning announcement in the past week that they were dropping out of ObamaCare markets. If even the Blues — the backbone of the individual insurance market for decades — can't make it, ObamaCare is truly on the road to ruin.

Blue Cross was once thought to be ObamaCare's firewall. If for-profit insurers decided to drop out of the exchanges, at least these venerable nonprofits would remain to provide coverage.

But that's not the case anymore. Despite getting approval on an eye-popping rate hike of nearly 60% for 2017, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee announced that it was quitting three of the largest ObamaCare markets in the state, which will leave 100,000 enrollees to scramble for an alternative coverage next year.

The state's Blue Cross had lost half a billion dollars in ObamaCare's first three years, and the company's spokesman said "there are too many uncertainties to continue participating on a statewide level as we have before."

But Dana Milbank at the Washington Post  thinks its doing fine. It's failing just fine, and leading to increased demands for socialized medicine.