When the cynically misnamed Affordable Care Act was passed, Democrats and their media megaphones assured the American public that this was a carefully crafted piece of policy architecture. Time would tell, and now it is telling — with predictable results highlighted by Aetna’s decision to stop offering individual insurance plans through the Obamacare exchanges in most locations. Aetna says that the Obamacare insurance pool is older and sicker than expected, which means much higher costs. Even as insurance premiums soar, Aetna is losing money on its individual plans under Obamacare, and so it will join dozens of other insurers in ceasing to sell them.

Politicians sometimes forget that a right of exit exists for the people and firms that do the actual work and create the actual wealth that makes life in these United States possible. Raise the income-tax rate high enough and some people will stop working — or figure out how to take their pay as capital gains or in some other tax-advantaged form. All those regulations, mandates, and price controls on insurance companies sound like brilliant social engineering, right up until the moment the insurance companies stop selling insurance.

The insurers are, let’s not forget, guilty parties here, too. Obamacare might be a headache for them now, but it was sold to them as one of the greatest pieces of corporate welfare in all of history: Most industries would kill for a federal mandate requiring every single American family to buy its product, especially if that mandate was paired with subsidies to insulate consumers from high prices. The insurance companies thought they were getting on a crony-capitalism gravy train. Instead, they ended up under it.