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UnitedHealth CEO Stephen Hemsley offered a mea culpa Tuesday for his company's decision to dive deeper into the Affordable Care Act's public insurance exchanges, a move that ultimately forced the nation's largest health insurer to cut its earnings forecast. Hemsley told investors that the insurer should have learned more about the still-new business, and expanding before it did that was "for us, a bad decision." UnitedHealth jumped into two dozen state-based exchanges for 2015 after selling coverage on just four in 2014. (Murphy, 12/1)

UnitedHealth Group should have stayed out of Obamacare's new individual markets longer, the chief executive of the biggest U.S. health insurer said Tuesday, after announcing last month that it will take hundreds of millions of dollars in losses related to the business. While the company's other lines of business are growing, instead of expanding into Obamacare next year, the company should have kept waiting, UnitedHealth CEO Stephen Hemsley said at an investor meeting in New York. (Tracer, 12/1)

Insurance giant UnitedHealth Group on Tuesday seemingly took another step closer to bailing out of Obamacare in 2017 when its top corporate executive engaged in more public handwringing over financial losses and conceded strategic mistakes in rushing into the system. While a pullout by UnitedHealth would deliver a serious blow to the future of President Obama’s signature health insurance law, a larger concern is whether its departure would trigger a stampede to the door by other bigger players in Obamacare, including Aetna and Anthem. (Pianin, 12/1)