No pro­tec­tion here. Blue Shield has report­ed that, while Unit­ed may be reel­ing and the oth­er car­ri­ers feel­ing less than san­guine about their chances for suc­cess, they have made $107 mil­lion in “excess prof­its” It was fur­ther report­ed that Blue Shield of Cal­i­for­nia account­ed for near­ly 30% of the excess prof­its nation­al­ly from all exchanges. A Blue Shield spokesper­son said “when pric­ing for 2014, like oth­er insur­ers, we were doing it in the dark. We hap­pened to get a health­i­er pop­u­la­tion. That was pure­ly by chance” Uh, huh. So why are they increas­ing rates again in 2016? Must be pure­ly by chance.