JumpinJack
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UnitedHealth Makes Good on Threat to Pull Out of Obamacare
A robust number of plan choices?
In the city I'm moving to, only two insurance cos. sell Obamacare: Blue Cross Blue Shield and United HealthCare. Only HMOs for BCBS, and only EPOs for UNH.
Previously, BCBS had pulled its PPOs from the state of Texas, and Unite Healthcare chose not to offer PPOs in Texas. As you may known, many providers don't accept HMOs for the reason that they pay so little and are hard to work with because of the regulations and requirements by the insurance companies. BCBS is being sued for providing fraudulent provider lists, luring in unsuspecting insureds, who later could not find providers who would take the insurance. (I ran across that myself with BCBS; I had what appeared to be a totally false list, not just an outdated list; it had knee specialists on the PCP list, and numerous doctors who never did take that policy, and a few who could not be located in the city at all.)
BCBS has issues with being accepted by providers (I called around and searched for a PCP for some time in my current big city before finally finding ONE who would take it, but it was too late for me to get in for an annual exam before my move, or get a flu shot). However, the good thing was that UNH would sell it in the new city I eventually settle in. Now, it looks like that may not be the case, and would leave only BCBS, which is lousy insurance. It covers only one of the two hospitals in the city. (There's that "choice" issue again.)
The Affordable Care Act suffered another jolt late last week with the news that UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s largest health insurer, was making good on its threat to pull out of Obamacare, beginning with its operations in Georgia and Arkansas.
UnitedHealth roiled the market last November when it revealed that it was considering exiting Obamacare after incurring hundreds of millions of dollars in losses related to ACA business. Then UnitedHealth CEO Stephen Hemsley confessed to investors meeting in New York in December that the company should have stayed out of the program a little longer to better gauge its profitability potential.
So it wasn’t a huge surprise on Friday when UnitedHealth spokesperson Tyler Mason confirmed to The Washington Post that the company, indeed, was pulling out of Georgia and Arkansas, two relatively small states that proved to be highly unprofitable terrain for the company.
This development is troubling, especially if it UnitedHealth pulls out of other bigger states, or if other major insurers such as Aetna and Anthem follow suit. But experts have cautioned not to make too much of UnitedHealth’s flight from the market. While it is one of the largest insurers on the national scene, UnitedHealth nonetheless is a bit player in Obamacare and holds a much smaller market share than other rivals like Aetna and Blue Cross Blue Shield.
United Health and Aetna both reported losses last year after the companies badly underestimated the cost of providing health care insurance to many individuals who turned out to be older and sicker than they had anticipated. UnitedHealth generally enrolled consumers with better health than the overall exchange population, according to Hemsley, but it still lost money.
“As with any new market, we expect changes and adjustments in the early years with issuers both entering and exiting states,” Aaron Albright, a spokesperson for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which operates Obamacare, told the Washington Post. “The marketplace is a reliable source of coverage for millions of Americans with a robust number of plan choices.”
A robust number of plan choices?
In the city I'm moving to, only two insurance cos. sell Obamacare: Blue Cross Blue Shield and United HealthCare. Only HMOs for BCBS, and only EPOs for UNH.
Previously, BCBS had pulled its PPOs from the state of Texas, and Unite Healthcare chose not to offer PPOs in Texas. As you may known, many providers don't accept HMOs for the reason that they pay so little and are hard to work with because of the regulations and requirements by the insurance companies. BCBS is being sued for providing fraudulent provider lists, luring in unsuspecting insureds, who later could not find providers who would take the insurance. (I ran across that myself with BCBS; I had what appeared to be a totally false list, not just an outdated list; it had knee specialists on the PCP list, and numerous doctors who never did take that policy, and a few who could not be located in the city at all.)
BCBS has issues with being accepted by providers (I called around and searched for a PCP for some time in my current big city before finally finding ONE who would take it, but it was too late for me to get in for an annual exam before my move, or get a flu shot). However, the good thing was that UNH would sell it in the new city I eventually settle in. Now, it looks like that may not be the case, and would leave only BCBS, which is lousy insurance. It covers only one of the two hospitals in the city. (There's that "choice" issue again.)
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