UnitedHealthcare is operating on the ACA exchanges in 34 states this year. I assumed that they'd announce which states they were staying in or dropping out of all at once during yesterday's quarterly earnings conference call, but apparently not. Instead, the status of each state has been dribbling out one by one over the past week or two.
I haven't posted anything about Louisiana's ACA Medicaid expansion since back in January, just before newly-elected Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards took office. At the time, it looked like the program wouldn't actually kick off until July, and would enroll perhaps 300,000 people.
La. Governor Announces Medicaid Expansion Will Begin June 1, Save State $677M Over 5 Years
About 375,000 people in Louisiana are expected to enroll in the program for low-income residents. At the same time, officials in Arkansas continue wrestling with the governor's plan to end the political impasse over expansion.
However, it's also worth keeping in mind that in many of these states, United has a pretty small presence to begin with. Case in point: Connecticut:
LT. GOVERNOR WYMAN, ACCESS HEALTH CT CEO WADLEIGH STATEMENTS ON UNITED HEALTHCARE ANNOUNCEMENT
(HARTFORD, CT) – Lieutenant Governor Nancy Wyman, Chair of the Access Health CT (AHCT) Board, and AHCT CEO Jim Wadleigh today issued the following statements on the announcement that in 2017, United Healthcare is pulling out of most state healthcare marketplaces:
For nearly 7 years now (starting well before the Affordable Care Act was even voted on, much less passed or signed into law), the Republican Party has been promising their own comprehensive plan to replace it.
One of the best running jokes in American politics is the one about Republicans releasing their own alternative to the Affordable Care Act. Any day now, GOP leaders have been saying for many years, they’re going to have a plan that rivals “Obamacare,” and it’s going to be awesome.
As I've stated many times in the past, I'm in favor of ultimately phasing out most of the private, for-profit insurance industry. My timeline and specifics differ greatly from, say, Bernie Sanders's proposed single payer plan, and I think there's room for the private market for supplemental insurance, but I'm no fan of keeping things as they are. While not every carrier is guilty of doing so, the health insurance industry as a whole has repeatedly proven itself to have a hell of a lot of bad corporate citizens over the years, to put it mildly.
Having said that, there are some criticisms which aren't always warranted, and one of these just came up today in light of UnitedHealthcare's decision to pull out of the ACA exchanges in most of the 34 states they're currently operating in...or more specifically (since United wasn't even participating the first year), the losses sustained by many other carriers during the first 2 Open Enrollment Periods for 2014 and 2015.
UPDATE: Zachery Tracer of Bloomberg News and Phil Galetitz of Kaiser Health News have confirmed that UnitedHealthcare will stay in Virginia and Nevada next year, but they won't stay around in Connecticut. More details as they come in....
Update 4:10pm: According to Zachery Tracer, UnitedHealthcare to pull out of Texas, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Tennessee and Missouri as well.
As you'll recall, until now I had data on "grandfathered" and "grandmothered" policy enrollment from 3 states: Alaska, Florida and Kentucky. However, even that limited data is kind of iffy, because most of it is from either 2014 or 2015, making it difficult to pin down the current numbers as of Spring 2016. Here's a summary of what I have so far:
Based on these numbers, I've extrapolated out to estimate perhaps 1.1 - 1.6 million grandmothered (transitional) enrollees and 800K - 1.4 million grandfathered enrollees nationally.
You'll notice that I left a blank line; that's because as always, Louise Norris has come through with some hard numbers out of The Big One: California:
@charles_gaba Got some more date from CA. It's as of 12/31/14, but they said the 12/31/15 report should be out very soon. CA has 2 reports..
As a patient, all you need to do is go to the doctor and show your insurance card. Bernie’s plan means no more copays, no more deductibles and no more fighting with insurance companies when they fail to pay for charges.
In my response, I noted that aside from anything else, getting rid of all co-pays and deductible altogether sounded a bit...off...to me. To the best of my knowledge, no other country in the world, even those which have single payer-like systems, cover 100% of everything without any out of pocket expense to the patient...and with good reason. While it doesn't specify anything about "no insurance premiums", that's kind of the core concept of any single payer system, and he specifically says that "all you need to do" is go to the doctor with your insurance card. The "premiums" are, of course, listed as a 6.2% employer premium and a special 2.2% income tax paid by households.
UnitedHealth Group Inc. plans to exit a third state Obamacare market as the insurer works to stem losses from its struggling Affordable Care Act business.
The insurer won’t sell policies through Michigan’s ACA exchange for next year, according to Andrea Miller, a spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Insurance and Financial Services. Georgia and Arkansas said last week that UnitedHealth will quit their exchanges for 2017.
...Fifteen insurers sold policies in the state for this year, U.S. data show.
