What happens to Obamacare when the exchanges collapse?

UnitedHealthcare, the biggest health insurer in the United States, said Tuesday that it plans to exit most of the Affordable Care Act state exchanges where it currently operates by 2017.
The health insurer had already indicated that it was dropping coverage of the plans, more commonly known as Obamacare, in Arkansas, Georgia and Michigan.
But during a conference call with analysts Tuesday, CEO Stephen Hemsley noted that "next year we will remain in only a handful of states."
Hemsley explained that UnitedHealth will leave most states by 2017 because the markets for these exchanges are relatively small and also have higher risks for the company over the short-term.
As such, he said UnitedHealth (UNH) could not serve these exchanges on an "effective and sustained basis."
It shouldn't come as a huge surprise. UnitedHealth had previously said that it lost $475 million on the ACA exchanges last year and could lose another $500 million this year.

On GOS Obamacare is a win-win. But in reality...
Obamacare "death spiral"?

Health insurance companies are amplifying their warnings about the financial sustainability of the ObamaCare marketplaces as they seek approval for premium increases next year.
Insurers say they are losing money on their ObamaCare plans at a rapid rate, and some have begun to talk about dropping out of the marketplaces altogether.
“Something has to give,” said Larry Levitt, an expert on the health law at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “Either insurers will drop out or insurers will raise premiums.”
While analysts expect the market to stabilize once premiums rise and more young, healthy people sign up, some observers have not ruled out the possibility of a collapse of the market, known in insurance parlance as a “death spiral.”
In the short term, there is a growing likelihood that insurers will push for substantial premium increases, creating a political problem for Democrats in an election year...
And a report from McKinsey & Company found that in the individual market, which includes the ObamaCare marketplaces, insurers lost money in 41 states in 2014, and were only profitable in 9 states.
“We continue to have serious concerns about the sustainability of the public exchanges,” Mark Bertolini, the CEO of Aetna, said in February.

More troops to Iraq

President Barack Obama's decision to send still more American troops to Iraq, and to put military advisers closer to the front lines against the Islamic State, fits a pattern of ever-deepening involvement in a country whose war Obama exited with supposed finality in December 2011.
From the initial contingent of 170 U.S. soldiers who entered Baghdad as advisers in June 2014, after the Islamic State overran much of northern and western Iraq and seemed poised to threaten Baghdad, the troop total jumped to 1,550 six months later. It topped 3,000 in April 2015 and then edged higher. The latest increase announced Monday by Defense Secretary Ash Carter pushes the authorized total above 4,000. More increases seem likely.

Iraq's government impass

Iraqi parliament speaker Salim al-Jabouri has suspended parliament "until further notice" after a week of political rows, brawls and attempts by rebel MPs to unseat him.
The announcement came during a Tuesday parliament session, days after rebel MPs voted to remove him and elected Adnan al-Janabi as an interim replacement, meaning there are now two claimants to the speakership.

Another recession signal

Take a peek below the headline jobs data, however, and there are signs that the labor market is losing some momentum. Temporary-help employment, which peaked prior to the last two recessions, is showing signs of topping out. And a broad labor-market index constructed by Federal Reserve economists -- and monitored by Chair Janet Yellen -- has fallen for three straight months, the first time that’s happened since 2009.
"I am a little concerned," said 75-year-old Bob Funk, chief executive officer of Express Employment Professionals, which provides temporary workers to companies. "Our industry is always on the front end of a recession," as provisional workers are the first to be let go on signs of economic weakness.
In the run-up to the 2001 recession, provisional employment peaked 11 months before the downturn began. The lag before the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009 was 16 months.

Victory for more dead civilians

Though the Pentagon has mostly issued blanket denials whenever they’re caught killing civilians in airstrikes against ISIS targets anyhow, officials say their eagerness to escalate the air war against ISIS targets has seen the implementation of new rules allow the US to kill larger numbers of civilians per attack.
The details are still scant, with the official rules likely to remain a secret, but officials say they have implemented a “sliding scale,” based on the region being targeted and the “opportunity.” In some cases, US airstrikes will be allowed to kill 10 civilians per strike.

British parliament won't be voting on war

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond today confirmed that the British government intends to send ground troops to Libya to join an international coalition invasion, and has no intention of asking the parliament to vote on the matter.
Parliament has been a thorn in the Cameron government’s side in previous interventions, barring them from participating in an ultimately scrapped 2013 US invasion of Syria, and seeking to limit their involvement in the subsequent US air war in Syria, though they finally authorized it in December of 2015.
This time, British officials are just going to lie outright, label all the commandos “trainers,” and insist that 1,000 combat troops aren’t a war that needs parliamentary authorization.