Obamacare insurers dwindle as Humana, UnitedHealthcare exit Arizona
- Blue Cross Blue Shield is the only insurer filing to sell Obamacare plans in all Arizona counties.
- Blue Cross Blue Shield would be the only insurer in 8 counties.
- Five Arizona counties would have two insurers.
Only one health insurer, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona, has filed paperwork with federal regulators and the state Department of Insurance to sell Affordable Care Act plans in every county of the state next year.
The Department of Insurance said preliminary filings show that six health-insurance companies overall have filed plans and rates to sell marketplace plans in Arizona.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona would be the only marketplace choice for residents of eight rural Arizona counties. Another five counties would have only two marketplace options to consider. The Department of Insurance did not identify which counties the insurance companies plan to sell products in.
The choices have narrowed this year because UnitedHealthcare and Humana, both citing losses from the Affordable Care Act plans, have exited Arizona's Obamacare marketplace for 2017.
1 option for 8 counties
The narrowing of marketplace health insurers has no effect on the vast majority of Arizonans who get health coverage through an employer or government health insurers such as Medicare, Medicaid or the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Just over 135,000 Arizonans were enrolled in an ACA marketplace plan as of Dec. 31, with 75 percent of those individuals collecting tax credits to offset the cost of monthly premiums.
But the narrowing of choices will reverberate in eight rural Arizona counties that may have only one health insurance plan, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona. The insurer still is on the fence about whether it will sell plans in all parts of the state even though it has filed paperwork to do so.
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Arizona Department of Insurance spokeswoman Erin Klug said health insurers that have filed plans will have until Aug. 9 to add or eliminate service areas.
With a reported loss of $185 million on individual plans sold during the first two years of marketplace exchanges, Blue Cross Blue Shield said there aren't enough people signing up for Arizona's marketplace plans and paying monthly premiums to offset those losses.
The insurer said in a statement that it will work with state and federal regulators on "how to improve the Arizona individual market and explore ways in which we can continue to serve individuals and families, particularly in the rural areas."
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services required insurance companies to file applications, and the Department of Insurance required health insurance companies to file plans and rates by Wednesday.
Insurers with plans for parts of state
In addition to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona, Klug said, five other insurers have filed plans for parts of Arizona: Aetna, Cigna, Health Choice, Health Net and Phoenix Health Plans.
Information on rates won't be available until June, when state insurance regulators are expected to reveal which plans are asking for rate increases of 10 percent or more. Details on insurance plans with single-digit rate-increase proposals won't be be made public until state regulators review the plans later this year.
Blue Cross Blue Shield and UnitedHealthcare's All Savers are the only Arizona health-care insurance companies available through the ACA marketplace this year in eight counties where more than 30,000 people chose a plan: Cochise, Graham, Greenlee, La Paz, Pinal, Santa Cruz, Yavapai and Yuma counties.
However, UnitedHealthcare in 2017 plans to pull out of Arizona and most other states where it sold ACA plans, citing financial losses from a relatively small market pool of customers who carry higher risk, top executive said.
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Insurance giant Aetna, which sold marketplace plans in Maricopa County this year, said it will expand its offerings in 2017 to include Pinal County. Aetna is merging with Humana, another large insurer that said it will pull away from some markets in 2017. A Humana spokesman would not discuss the insurer's marketplace plans for Arizona.
Humana sold marketplace plans this year in Maricopa and Pima counties. The company's annual financial statement showed it had about 8,400 individual customers in Arizona as of Dec. 31, 2015, but the filing did not indicate how many of those customers purchased plans over the ACA marketplace.
Affordable Care Act boosters in Arizona said they are concerned by the dwindling options many consumers may face in rural Arizona.
Diane Brown, executive director of Arizona Public Interest Research Group, said fewer insurance plans competing for customers could mean higher costs for some consumers.
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"Particularly in rural Arizona, there's been a lack of companies seeking opportunity to grow their customer base and provide health insurance options," Brown said. "It is critical that those options exist in both urban and rural communities."
Arizona has had far more insurance options for marketplace plans than other states, said Suzanne Pfister, president and CEO of Phoenix-based Vitalyst Health Foundation.
"As it starts to narrow over the years, it is concerning," Pfister said. "Other states have really struggled with only one or two insurers. The one thing that has been good about Arizona is we have a pretty robust (insurance) market."