Dive Brief:
- A new report from the Kaiser Family Foundation has concluded that insurance exchanges have had mixed success in boosting competition in varied insurance markets.
- According to data from the seven states that have published their enrollment figures, Kaiser found that some states, such as California and New York, have much more competitive insurance markets then they did before the exchanges opened. But in other states, including Connecticut and Washington, markets are actually less competitive than they were a year ago.
- "There are some examples of smaller or newer plans being able to get a sizable piece of the market in the exchanges, but by and large a lot of the players in the exchanges that are the biggest [now] were the biggest before," Cynthia Cox, a senior analyst at Kaiser, told Bloomberg.
Dive Insight:
It's no big surprise that smaller or newer plans can't compete with the health insurance giants mano a mano in the marketplaces. Unfortunately, what that means is that the downward pricing pressure we hope to see is less likely to happen than in a marketplace where smaller players are truly competitive. That being said, the dynamics may shift as the players learn more about the population they're covering. Then, and only then, will we have a good idea of how the competition among health plans affects market share.