Via Washington Examiner:
A majority of health insurers lost money during the first year of the Obamacare marketplaces, a new study finds.
Two-thirds of the insurers failed to turn any profits from plans they sold to individuals in 2014, although a majority of those insurers didn't profit in the prior year, either, according to a report from the Commonwealth Fund. One-third of the insurers did succeed in turning a profit.
When researchers analyzed data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on insurers' profits, they found that companies underestimated their spending on the new enrollees by 2 percent. Estimating how much the new consumers would cost was a difficult challenge for insurers, because they had to make all kinds of assumptions about how sick or healthy the new customer base would be.