Dive Brief:
- UnitedHealthcare is pulling out of New Jersey’s ACA market, the 27th Obamacare exchange it has left, Bloomberg reports.
- According to a letter obtained by Bloomberg, the company’s Oxford Health Plans division is exiting the state’s individual coverage market — both ACA and other — beginning next year.
- Meanwhile, Humana announced it won’t participate in Colorado’s public exchange market in 2017.
Insight:
UnitedHealthcare sold 2016 plans in 34 state exchanges and is expected to remain active in at least New York, Virginia and Nevada, according to Bloomberg. The company’s decision to withdraw from a number of states is due to mounting losses in Obamacare markets. Earlier this month, UnitedHealth announced its intent to leave the individual marketplaces for ACA plans in Kentucky and Iowa.
Both Humana and UnitedHealth are leaving the Colorado exchange. Discontinuance of the plans will affect more than 20,000 people, reports ACASignups.net.
Humana will still offer plans in the Mountain State’s off-exchange small group market for 2017, while UnitedHealthcare will offer individual plans off exchange through its Golden Rule Insurance subsidiary.
While these insurers are exiting, the individual market, while not failing, is in flux. Earlier this month, former HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told Bloomberg Television while Obamacare has extended medical insurance to about 20 million people, the new insurance exchanges are still shaky.
The "young invincibles" are needed to balance out the costs for the high insurance users in the exchange. Yet, as Modern Healthcare's Bob Herman noted, the clutch 18-34 age group only accounted for about 28% of exchange members in 2014, well below the 40% level experts say is needed to stablize the individual rate environment.