UnitedHealth warns losses “unsustainable” …

The chief executive officer of the largest U.S. health insurance company on Thursday told investors that the company’s losses from Obamacare were worsening, showed no signs of improvement, and would be unsustainable beyond 2016.

UnitedHealth Group CEO Stephen J. Hemsley made the comments in a conference call after the insurer warned investors about $425 million in losses primarily due to its participation in Obamacare, even though the company previously expected that the exchanges would have a neutral effect on profits. He even expressed some regret about participating in the program in the first place.

Asked whether the company would be willing to tolerate losses beyond 2016, Hemsley was emphatic: “No. We cannot sustain these losses. We can’t really subsidize a marketplace that doesn’t appear at the moment to be sustaining itself.” […]

He said that the company would determine by the middle of next year to what extent UnitedHealth would participate in Obamacare, if at all. This decision, he said, would be made on a state-by state-basis.

In the meantime, he said the company had taken steps to limit its exposure to the law, by raising premiums, cutting back on marketing, and reducing commissions.

“We saw no indication of anything actually improving,” he said.

ObamaCare was put in place to force the country into a single-payer program with BigNannyGovernment in charge of everyone’s medical care.