Dr. Robert Zarr, Physicians For a National Health Program joins Thom. Insurance giant Aetna sent shockwaves through the political world earlier this week when it announced that it would withdraw from Obamacare exchanges in 11 states and only offer insurance in four state-level Obamacare exchanges in 2017. Predictably – conservatives pounced on this news. They said it was proof – PROOF – that Obamacare is doomed to failure. Now the story is a bit more complicated. It turns out that Aetna’s decision to pull out of all those Obamacare exchanges had less to do with finance – if it had anything to do with it all. It was about political hardball. According to The Huffington Post “[J]ust last month, in a letter to the Department of Justice, Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini made a clear threat: If President Barack Obama’s administration refused to allow [a proposed merger with Humana] to proceed… Aetna would be in a worse financial position and would have to withdraw from most of its Obamacare markets, and quite likely all of them.”
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