Humana Plans to Pull Out of Obamacare’s Insurance Exchanges -
Humana announced on Tuesday that it would no longer offer health insurance coverage in the state marketplaces created under the federal health
care law, becoming the first major insurer to cast a no-confidence vote over selling individual plans on the public exchanges for 2018.
The company cited an “initial analysis of data” about the type of customers who signed up for its plans this year, and it said
that it saw no evidence that the market was improving but that it was “seeing further signs of an unbalanced risk pool,” as customers with expensive medical conditions continued to enroll as compared with healthy people
In early January, the company said the number of its customers buying coverage through the exchanges had dropped to about 150,000,
a small fraction of the roughly 12 million individuals who initially signed up for coverage through the exchanges.
Several major insurers have said they cannot begin to decide whether to offer coverage
next year until the government clarifies if and how it plans to change the rules.
Based in Louisville, Ky., Humana is not a major player in the individual exchanges
and is among the national insurers, like Aetna and UnitedHealth Group, that have struggled to make money in the market.
Humana released word of its withdrawal on Tuesday after it announced that it would no longer pursue a merger with Aetna, another large insurer.
President Trump immediately seized on the company’s decision as evidence that the Affordable Care Act needed to be repealed and replaced.