Aetna has announced it will significantly scale back its participation in the Obamacare marketplace, including in Arizona. According to the company,it will “reduce its individual public exchange participation from 778 to 242 counties for the 2017 plan year, maintaining an on-exchange presence in Delaware, Iowa, Nebraska and Virginia.”
The company reports that it “will continue to offer an off-exchange individual product option for 2017 to consumers in the vast majority of counties where it offered individual public exchange products in 2016.”
“Following a thorough business review and in light of a second-quarter pretax loss of $200 million and total pretax losses of more than $430 million since January 2014 in our individual products, we have decided to reduce our individual public exchange presence in 2017, which will limit our financial exposure moving forward. More than 40 payers of various sizes have similarly chosen to stop selling plans in one or more rating areas in the individual public exchanges over the 2015 and 2016 plan years, collectively exiting hundreds of rating areas in more than 30 states. As a strong supporter of public exchanges as a means to meet the needs of the uninsured, we regret having to make this decision,” reads a statement from the company.
Earlier this month, the company announced that it was requesting an average rate increase of 86 percent. The company also announced that it was canceling plans to expand into more states next year and would reassess whether to remain in markets due to “significant structural challenges facing the public exchanges.
Residents in Pinal County will be especially hard hit due to the fact that they will no longer have any insurer in the marketplace.
Arizona leaders reacted to the news:
Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick issued a statement: “This is a heartless decision at a time when big insurance companies are raking in millions and their stock prices are through the roof. We can’t go back to the way things used to be when women were charged more than men for coverage, when lifetime caps prevented countless Americans from getting the care they needed and when a health insurance company could deny coverage based on a pre-existing condition.”
Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, who is running for the GOP nomination in the open Congressional District 1 seat vacated by Kirkpatrick stated: “For years, Obamacare has been ruinous to our health insurance system,” said Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, the leading Republican candidate in Congressional District 1. “Now, Pinal County residents will be losing insurance. The Affordable Care Act has proven unaffordable and offered little care.”
U.S. Senator John McCain stated: “In what has become a string of bad news for the president’s crumbling health care law, Aetna has announced that it will significantly scale back its participation in the Obamacare marketplace after suffering significant financial losses. It’s especially disturbing that this move could negatively impact the nearly 10,000 citizens enrolled in Obamacare in Pinal County, Arizona, where not a single health insurer has filed to offer federal exchange plans. If left without an insurer, Pinal County citizens would have no health care options when it comes to Obamacare’s marketplace.
“From the start, Obamacare has been the wrong solution to fixing our nation’s health care system, and has left our citizens with less freedom, reduced access, and decreased quality of care. It’s past time Obamacare supporters wake up to this fact, and restore Americans’ right to choose the health care that works for them and their families.”