The 3rd largest health insurance company in the USA is pulling its plans from 70% of the Obamacare insurance exchanges it participates in.
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Pinal County, Arizona, avoided becoming the only county in the nation without an Affordable Care Act marketplace insurer after Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona chose to stay. The company told the Associated Press that premium rates will increase a whopping 51% in Pinal County next year, although much of that will be counteracted by the federal subsidies that the vast majority of customers earning between 100% and 400% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) are eligible for in the marketplaces. “We were caught a little bit by surprise that Aetna would not enter Pinal County”.
The Arizona Department of Insurance didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment Wednesday.
Stelnik said Blue Cross Blue Shield will seek approval for five Pinal County plans across a range of coverage tiers. Bloomfield, Conn. -based Cigna will be the sole insurer in Maricopa County, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The insurer exodus has since continued.
If Blue Cross Blue Shield did not step up, almost 10,000 county residents would have been left without an affordable health care option.
Blue Cross was the only insurer able to easily return to the county because it now sells plans there. The insurer will sell Affordable Care Act plans in 14 of 15 Arizona counties, and it expects to be the only marketplace option in 13 of those counties. “In the meantime, BCBSAZ is trying hard to balance the company’s financial losses from the ACA with the very real concerns of Arizonans”.
“We were concerned about not only the long-term stability, but at the same time extremely concerned that Pinal residents had no options under the exchange”, Stelnik said. With Phoenix Health Plan Inc.’s recent decision to vacate Maricopa County at the end of the year, Cigna will be the only option for the state’s largest county and its almost 130,000 marketplace enrollees, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
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Aetna planned to provide coverage in Pinal County starting in 2017, but it announced on August 15 that it would scale back its participation in the exchange nationwide because of financial losses, leaving a void in Pinal County.
