Other companies seem to be faring better.
Advertisement
“It’s no surprise that companies are adapting at different rates to a market where they compete for business on cost and quality rather than by denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions”, Counihan said in a statement. Instead, the opposite is happening.
The moves by Aetna and UnitedHealthcare follow decisions a year ago by Assurant Health to exit the health insurance market altogether and by Consumers’ Choice to fold.
It wasn’t always so in Arizona.
Thousands of Lancaster County residents will have to choose from fewer, more expensive health plans next year as another large national health insurer drops out of the marketplace set up by President Barack Obama’s landmark health care law. Four entire states will have only one Obamacare insurer. More than 11 million Americans are covered by Obamacare policies, with 85% of them receiving federal subsidies that blunt the impact of premium hikes. “Unfortunately, we might be living through the one-time correction, but hopefully it’s not all doom and gloom”. But it only plans to offer policies in three states next year: Nevada, Virginia and NY. Aetna previously said it was a break-even operation.
Next year, Aetna will sell individual marketplace plans only in Delaware, Iowa, Nebraska and Virginia but none in Florida under the Aetna name or affiliated brands such as Coventry, a spokesman said.
“We are re-evaluating our 2017 plans and where Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona makes coverage available”, the statement said.
A GOP-led Congress blocked “risk corridor” money under the Affordable Care Act created to help insurers cover losses, which some called a bailout. Health insurance experts say three insurers are needed for a healthy competitive market.
Aetna will notify current policyholders before open enrollment in November that their coverage will be discontinued.
Aetna, which has operations in Blue Bell, is the third major insurer to significantly cut back its participation in the public exchanges.
Neighboring Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, is expected to have just two relatively small insurers in the area left on its marketplace next year.
Urban markets or places with higher populations should still have plenty of health insurance choices on their exchanges for 2017, said Sabrina Corlette, a research professor with Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute.
In April, UnitedHealth announced its plans to withdraw from most exchanges.
Now, only seven co-ops remain from the original 23 and more than 100,000 policyholders across multiple states will have to search for new health coverage.
One concern is that with less competition, insurers may tighten their provider networks and give these consumers fewer choices of hospitals and doctors. Until that happens, insurers were expecting the federal government to help with the costs of caring for the early enrollees. “We at NCDOI were in the middle of reviewing Aetna’s rate requests for 2017”. The company has declined to say how many IL customers it serves. Levitt said people in about a quarter of all counties will only have one option.
“Lots of that magnitude couldn’t continue for subsequent years so we had to make a decision on reducing costs”, Hutchings said.
The 3rd largest health insurance company in the USA is pulling its plans from 70% of the Obamacare insurance exchanges it participates in.
Advertisement
“We were at the tail end of that process”, Farmer said.
