Dive Brief:
- UnitedHealth Group will not offer individual insurance coverage next year in Michigan - the third state the insurer has withdrawn from the ACA marketplace, The Wall Street Journal reported.
- UnitedHealth, which is considering withdrawing from all public exchanges, lost $720 million on its ACA plans.
- The insurer announced its intent to leave the Georgia and Arkansas ACA markets in 2017 earlier this month.
Dive Insight:
UnitedHealth expects to lose more than $500 million on its 2016 exchange business, which makes up less than 1% of its total membership.
Despite the aforementioned $720 million loss, UnitedHealth's overall revenue for 2015 increased 20% to hit $157.1 billion. In February, Covered California Executive Director Peter Lee took UnitedHealth to task for "throwing the Affordable Care Act under the bus" in order to excuse its exchange losses and threatening to end its participation. At the time, Lee argued the insurer's losses are due to its own mistakes regarding its rates and networks.
“The famous paradigm of ‘exit, voice, and loyalty’ definitely comes to mind when thinking about what might happen in the market this year,” Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Senior Adviser Katherine Hempstead told Forbes. “So far there’s been a lot more ‘voice’ than ‘exit’ and I basically think that will continue to be the case.”
UnitedHealth is expected to report its 2016 Q1 earnings Tuesday.