Officials in the state have said that the health insurer will not be selling its plans over the marketplace for 2017.
Georgia officials have now stated that UnitedHealthcare will no longer be selling its health plans over the state’s insurance exchange after this year, and the insurer has now become the only one that has said it won’t be continuing forward on the marketplace.
The insurance department in the state has said that UnitedHealthcare is the only one no longer selling on the exchange.
In the state, over 500,000 residents bought their health coverage over the Georgia insurance exchange for 2016. This has allowed them to be able to comply with the individual mandate of the federal Affordable Care Act. This requires most Americans to purchase the right health insurance if they haven’t already received it through their employer or another approved means.
This departure from the insurance exchange didn’t come as a surprise to everyone as the insurer had left hints.
According to Bill Custer, a health services professor from Georgia State University, UnitedHealthcare, an insurance company headquartered in Minnesota, had already cautioned investors about the fact that the plans they were selling over the state marketplace were losing money.
It is for this reason that when the health insurance company said it would be withdrawing from the marketplace, it wasn’t entirely unexpected. When an insurer has found that a certain market is not profitable – or that it is generating losses – and when it doesn’t look as though that situation will be turning around, one of the natural strategies that company may take is to step out of that situation.
Custer has explained that the insurance exchange remains a new model and insurers continue to work to be able to come up with the right strategies, models and plans that will allow them to better understand the right way to move forward. They are still working on working within the proper infrastructure in a way that will allow them to successfully sell and compete in a profitable way. While some insurance companies are continuing to build their futures within the marketplaces, others have stepped away.
