Dive Brief:
- Arizona's Meritus Health Partners became the 11th state health insurance co-op to go down after being removed from the marketplace just days before the beginning of open enrollment.
- The co-op is now under the control of Arizona Department of Insurance Director Andy Tobin, who filed Friday for an order of supervision for both Meritus Health Partners and Meritus Mutual Health Partners. The order prohibits the companies from offering new policies or renewing existing ones, only allowing them to honor current policies through the end of 2015.
- Following the order, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services removed the Meritus plans from the marketplace.
Dive Insight:
The fall of Meritus has taken place without the co-op's agreement, and with some debate regarding its necessity.
Meritus CEO Tom Zumtobel told the media the end came as a surprise, arguing the co-op had improved its finances and fulfilled its state requirements.
"This really caught us by surprise," Zumtobel told the Arizona Republic. "We couldn't get feedback from DOI (Department of Insurance) on what specifically we needed to do."
An article by The Associated Press contends the federal government made an error last year in calculating the co-op's performance and wrongly rated Meritus as one of the poorest performing co-ops.
Before Arizona, Utah held the latest health co-op to shut its doors. Maryland co-op Evergreen Health Cooperative CEO Peter Beilenson recently told Healthcare Dive the co-ops left standing by Nov. 1 should be in it for the long haul.