Will the last Obamacare insurer selling policies on the exchanges please turn off the lights before you leave?

One of the nation's largest health insurance companies is pulling out of the exchanges in all but a handful of states citing losses exceeding one billion dollars last year.

Humana says it will exit all but 11 states next year, further reducing the number of companies willing to sell policies in an environment that guarantees massive losses.  The numbers are just not adding up, as younger, healthier consumers are staying away from the exchanges in droves.

The Hill:

Humana’s decision to exit “substantially all” of the state exchanges comes the same day that the Obama administration announced it would step in to block a multibillion-dollar merger between Humana and Aetna. Both are among the nation's five biggest health insurers.

Another of those top five, UnitedHealth Group, announced earlier this year that it would be pulling out of most ObamaCare marketplaces, citing its own financial losses.

Humana had already shown signs of its struggle with ObamaCare, announcing this year it would pull out of at least two states.

In the earnings report released Thursday, officials underscored the sharp declines in healthcare premiums from the exchanges. The company expects to pull in between $750 million and $1 billion in premiums this year, compared to $3.4 billion projected over the last year.

Humana officials said in a statement that the changes will help the company "retain a viable product for individual consumers and address persistent risk selection challenges.”

Where's the tipping point?  About a dozen states have only two or three companies offering policies, reducing competition, and driving up rates.  Even with the subsidy, many people simply can't afford double-digit increases in their policies, forcing them to drop coverage.  I suspect that next year, there will be several states that will be unable to offer any insurance policies at all.

Humana will realize only about 30% of projected premiums this year, which is pretty much a catastrophe.  Their merger with Aetna would not have helped them this year, if it would have helped at all.  But the insurance companies deserve every drop of red ink they are bleeding, given their cheerleading for Obamacare back in 2020.  They helped create this monster.  And now, it's beginning to eat them.