While insurers made nearly twice as much money from healthcare premiums in 2014, overall profits “diminished noticeably” because of higher payouts, according to the expansive new analysis on companies participating in the exchanges. About a quarter of insurers did “substantially worse,” underestimating their claims by an average of 35 percent. That means only a small fraction of insurers “fared especially poorly,” the report said. Many companies recouped some of the money lost from ObamaCare plans with the help of the law’s reinsurance payments. The reinsurance program, which is slated to end in 2017, makes payments to insurers with far higher-than-expected medical costs in their ObamaCare plans. The analysis by then nonprofit Commonwealth Fund included all 144 insurers with at least 1,000 customers that sold mostly ObamaCare plans in 2014.
Most insurers lost money in first year of ObamaCare
