While almost all of the recent news surrounding the Affordable Care Act has been positive, this week brought an important setback: Aetna, one of the nation’s largest private insurers, announced that it’s losing money through “Obamacare” plans.
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“I$3 f the deal were challenged and/or blocked”, Bertolini warned, “we would need to take immediate actions to mitigate public exchange and ACA small group losses”.
The Huffington Post reporters calls the letter “a clear threat”.
Competition on some exchanges will be diminished next year when three of the nation’s largest health insurers – Aetna, UnitedHealthcare and Humana – will sell individual plans in many fewer markets.
The exits of Aetna, Humana and UnitedHealth from Affordable Care Act exchanges are limiting options for consumers and threatening to undermine one of the law’s key goals.
“Aetna says this change of tone about the Affordable Care Act has nothing to do with the merger – but some analysts have suggested that Aetna might ‘use its future participation in the exchanges in bargaining over its purchase of Humana”, Sen.
Nationally, the company said it will sell policies on state and federal insurance exchanges in only 242 counties, down from 778 this year. This will lead to only 20% of the lives Aetna insures through the exchanges covered come 2017.
Bernie Sanders said in a statement that people’s ability to get healthcare plans should not be dependent on the “whims” of insurance companies whose goal is to maximize earnings. Last month, the Department of Justice filed suit to block the company from acquiring Humana.
Aetna cited the large losses that the company has incurred from the exchange business – $200 million in the second quarter alone – when explaining its decision to roll back its business. Some states, such as Alaska and Oklahoma, will be left with only one participant selling individual coverage in 2017. For instance, the Kentucky Department of Insurance approved 2017 insurance rate increases of up to 22.9 percent for Anthem Health Plans, 27.9 percent for Baptist Health Plan customers and 47.18 percent for Golden Rule Insurance company customers.
News of the letter comes after Aetna announced yesterday that it would cut exchange policies in 11 of the 15 states where it now operates.
The Kaiser Family Foundation estimated earlier this year that about one in five US counties could be down to one health insurer on their public exchanges for next year, and about 70 percent of those markets will be rural.
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“Without getting into the heads of Aetna’s executives, it’s hard to say whether they were just describing a financial fact that they would have to pull out of the ACA marketplaces if the merger were blocked, or if they were making a thinly veiled threat”, Larry Levitt, a senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation wrote in an e-mail. SC and most of North Carolina could join that list due to the Aetna decision, Cox noted.
