Economics is far simpler than most in academics or government would have you believe. To make accurate predictions all you really need is an honest appreciation of the self-interest that is at the heart of free market transactions and an ability to understand how regulations that attempt to "correct" these realities don't work. This is certainly the case with the completely predictable slow-motion train wrecks that are the signature U.S. domestic policy experiments of the last eight years: Obamacare and Federal Reserve stimulus. From the start, I issued countless commentaries on why both would fail spectacularly. The jury has started to come back on Obamacare, and the results are a disaster. And while the verdict on the Fed's policies has yet to arrive in similarly stark terms, I believe that its failure is just as certain.

As I explained in my July 30, 2012, commentary "Justice Roberts is Right: The Plan Won't Work," the central flaw (among many others) in Obamacare is that it incentivizes younger, healthier people to drop out of insurance coverage while encouraging older, sicker people to sign up. The result would be a pool of insurance participants that would guarantee losses for those providing coverage. That's exactly what we are seeing.

After only four years of operation, there is now wholesale defection by insurance companies to abandon the Obamacare marketplace because they are hemorrhaging money faster than just about anyone predicted. To believe that any other outcome was possible would have been the equivalent of believing in the Tooth Fairy.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the four biggest U.S. health insurance companies, Anthem, Aetna, UnitedHealth and Humana are losing hundreds of millions of dollars on their Obamacare plans. And since these companies can't be compelled to operate a business that loses money, all four have significantly scaled back their offerings. UnitedHealth has already exited 31 of the 34 states where it sells ACA policies. Humana is now offering coverage in just 156 counties of the 1,351 counties in which it was active a year ago. The latest shoe to drop came this week when Aetna said it would stop selling Obamacare plans in 11 of the 15 states where it is currently active (Bloomberg Businessweek, 8/17/16).

It's no secret why the companies are losing so much money. Enrollees into the new plans take out far more money in benefits than they pay in premiums, despite the fact that premiums have increased substantially. That's because the pool of insures in the Obamacare plans differ sharply from those that exist in the private marketplace. Why this has happened should have been stunningly obvious to anyone. To quote from my 2012 commentary:

"…the ACA makes it illegal for insurance providers to deny coverage to anyone for any reason. This allows healthy people to drop insurance until they actually need it without incurring any risk. It's like allowing homeowners to buy fire insurance after their houses burn down." Given the high cost of insurance, the law allowed millions to take a free ride.

I argued then that penalties that would hit those who remained uninsured were insufficient to compel them to make an uneconomic decision. This was the same rational that was used by Chief Justice Roberts when he ruled that the plan was constitutional. He argued that since the penalties were not high enough to compel behavior, they should be seen as constitutional "taxes," not unconstitutional "penalties."

Similarly, by guaranteeing that no one could be denied insurance for any reason and that the sick would pay the same premiums as the healthy, the plans have sucked in lots of people guaranteed to take out more in benefits than they pay in premiums. Add these factors together and you get the recipe for guaranteed losses. In retrospect, it is simply incredible that supposedly smart people argued against this outcome while the law was being drafted and passed.