Posted on 10/15/2015 11:47:50 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Approximately 27,000 Tennesseans who had coverage through the Tennessee Community Health Alliance will be receiving cancelation notices soon. Just yesterday, the CHA announced that it had entered a voluntary state-approved runoff and will no longer offer insurance plans in 2016. This decision comes just weeks away from the next Obamacare Open Enrollment period beginning on November 1, 2015. Policyholders who continue to pay their premiums will keep their coverage through December 31, 2015, but will be forced to choose a new plan from the four remaining carriers participating in the state’s Exchange.
“This was not a decision that the Department took lightly, but it was the right decision,” TDCI Commissioner Julie Mix McPeak said. “With thousands of Tennesseans’ coverage hanging in the balance, CHA’s financial success could not be guaranteed. Ultimately, the risk of CHA’s potential failure in 2016 was too great and would have caused substantial detrimental effects on the market as a whole if it were to collapse.”
This latest announcement from Tennessee comes just days after Kentucky Health Cooperative Inc., the largest insurance provider on Kynect, the state’s ObamaCare exchange, announced it too is going out of business.
According to The Lexington Herald-Leader, Kentucky Health Cooperative has about 51,000 members in all 120 Kentucky counties – about 75 percent of those insured on Kynect – all of whom will have to find new insurance in 2016.
The co-op lost $50 million last year, partly because over 20,000 more people had purchased the insurance than originally estimated. Glenn Jennings, Kentucky Health Cooperative’s interim CEO, told the Herald-Leader that further financial woes came because many of their new members had not previously had health insurance, leading to “a lot of people with pent up medical needs.” Then, said Jennings, “when they suddenly had health insurance…they began using their benefits.”
Jennings said that they had slowed their losses to $4 million in the first half of 2015, but were counting on substantial federal loans to continue operations. Instead, the feds announced they would only provide 12.6 percent of the funds requested by insurers through the assistance program. Kentucky’s insurers were hoping to get a total of $77 million in loans, but only received $9.7 million.
Only 17 of the original 23 co-ops are still providing coverage, despite the federal government doling out a reported $2.4 billion in loans through an assistance program designed to help start Obamacare insurance cooperatives around the country. As of December 2014, 21 of the 23 were still losing money.
The 78,000+ enrollees in these two states who are now being notified that they’re losing their plans will likely find little comfort in the words of former HHS Secretary Sebelius, who recently claimed Obamacare keeps people from being “locked out, priced out, or dumped out,” of their plans. For these folks, their cancelation notices say otherwise.
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Kristina Ribali is the Senior Coalitions Director for the Foundation for Government Accountability.
I wondered how that was gonna work.
Where in the Sam hill is the media on this?? Why aren’t we hearing about these failures in the MSM??? These failures are due to Obama Care pressures.
Can you imagine the media reaction, if a Republican government program of some kind had utterly failed to achieve the stated goals? Can you imagine the media talking about such a program delivering less in services at greater cost than promised????
Instead the media virtually ignore the many failures of obamacare.
By this time next year there will be full-throated calls to bring back the Public Option.
Single payer in five.
Yep, so many people thought this was such a good way to go, to have a big plan to cover the people....yep, really good way to take YOUR money and put THEIR money in THEIR pockets...
What was wrong with going to an insurance companies and seeing what plans they had and what YOU could afford instead of THE GOVERNMENT....
My Grandmother told me when I was little, you want something that is working good broken, give it to the GOVERNMENT....and it has never failed!!!
This is so unexpected. Who would have guessed that requiring people to over-insure with coverage they don’t want would encourage people to use what they paid for, and increase the cost of medical care? What are the odds that socialism would fail yet again? Isn’t it due for a success?
The co-op lost $50 million last year, partly because over 20,000 more people had purchased the insurance than originally estimated.Funny how most private companies don't fail from having too many customers. Must be a government thing -- Lose a little on every customer and make it up in volume.
Here in OK, we decided not to play that game but it’s a rare week that passes in the online comment pages of the local paper without some lib-prog bemoaning our backward ways in OK and using this as an example of keeping the poor people down because we didn’t take the federal bait.
I live in ky. I’m 61. Jan 1, 2014 I cancelled my if insurance. I’ve been insurance free ever sinc and for the first time in my life.
At this point it feels like getting insurance would demonstrate a lack of faith in the Lord.
Sorry aboutspein errors. Using cell prone.
:^)
He almost ruined California when he was Governor the first time...now his second time of being Governor he has almost done it....why do you think so many people are moving out of California?
Nope, he can’t stand up to anyone, he only takes orders from obuma...like giving illegal immigrants drivers licenses even tho they can’t read or write or drive a car, if they have one....
word is that his next career move may be to Baltimore to act as Mayor... there...
That’s funny...TN didn’t set up any Obamacare co-ops or exchanges.
It would be as if they had created Social Security only now, but only the seniors signed up.
-PJ
Nice. Loose money on each person enrolled and make up the difference in volume.
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