Aetna is the latest health insurer that plans to cease its participation in Affordable Care Act exchanges. Aetna will stop participating in all but four states—Delaware, Iowa, Nebraska and Virginia—citing heavy losses tied to the insurance plans, USA Today reports.
The company’s decision follows similar moves by competitors such as UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s largest insurer. Beginning next year, Aetna says it will cease offering health care insurance options through the ACA exchanges in 68.9% of the counties where it offered plans this year. Affected enrollees will keep their plans through the end of 2016 but must find alternatives for next year.
Aetna sustained a second-quarter pre-tax loss of $200 million on its individual health care plans, though that figure includes results from insurance offered outside of the ACA exchanges.
“As a strong supporter of public exchanges as a means to meet the needs of the uninsured, we regret having to make this decision,” Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini says in a statement. “We will continue to evaluate our participation in individual public exchanges while gaining additional insight from the counties where we will maintain our presence, and may expand our footprint in the future should there be meaningful exchange-related policy improvements.”
In Louisiana, the loss of UnitedHealthcare—which is getting out of the ACA business next year, citing losses of about $1 billion in both last year and this year—and Louisiana Health Cooperative leaves only Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana and Vantage offering individual health policies in every parish.
As Business Report details in a recent feature, Blue Cross says it lost $66 million on ACA individual marketplace business in 2014 and $77 million last year. By the end of this year, Blue Cross anticipates total losses on individual plans to exceed $200 million over a three-year-period.
