If any insurer could cope with ObamaCare, it should have been Blue Cross Blue Shield.
Blue Cross companies came into the ObamaCare exchanges with decades of experience writing individual policies. Most of them are non-profits, which gives them an automatic leg up on the competition. And their plans captured the largest share of the exchange markets across the country.
But as with everything else about ObamaCare, it hasn't work out that way.
Last week Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota made a stunning announcement that it was pulling out of the state's individual insurance market altogether, after losing $500 million.
It might not be the last of the Blues to abandon ObamaCare. Across the country Blue Cross affiliates are losing staggering amounts of money thanks to the law, and are putting in for premium hikes that would have been unimaginable before ObamaCare.
For example, Health Care Services Corp. -- which owns Blue Cross affiliates in Illinois, Montana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas -- lost $1.5 billion on its ObamaCare-compliant plans last year.
As a result, it's requesting a nearly 60% rate hike in Texas, and almost 50% in Oklahoma. HCSC pulled out of the New Mexico exchange last year after the state turned down its 50%-plus rate increase.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee, meanwhile, lost about $300 million in ObamaCare's first two years and is likely to lose another $100 million this year. It wants a 62% increase in premiums, on top of the 36% it got last year.
Highmark Group, which owns Blue Cross affiliates in Pennsylvania, Delaware and West Virginia, lost $266 million in just the first nine months of 2015.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina lost $280 million on ObamaCare in 2015. Earlier this year, CEO Brad Wilson talked about possibly pulling out of ObamaCare, saying that "we can't offer something for sale in this marketplace that we know every time it's purchased we're losing money."
Arizona'S Blue Cross wants a 65% rate hike after reporting $185 million in losses in ObamaCare's first two years.
In Alabama, Blue Cross figures it lost $135 million last year, and $64 million in Nebraska.
Then there's the departure of UnitedHealth Group from most of its ObamaCare markets, Humana's exit from several, and the demise of 13 of the 23 ObamaCare-created insurance co-ops, and double-digit rate requests across the country.
Cynthia Cox of the Kaiser Family Foundation admitted to NPR that ObamaCare isn't exactly working out as intended. "The hope was that these markets would encourage exchange competition and (get) more insurers to come in.
"I don't know if we're at a point where it's completely worrisome," she went on, "but I think it does raise some red flags in pointing out that insurance companies need to be able to make a profit or at least cover their costs."
We are well beyond the point where it's "worrisome." Obama and his fellow Democrats tried to refashion the insurance market to their liking, and failed.
The question now isn't whether ObamaCare exchanges will somehow stabilize someday, but what comes next.