(Health) Insurance Options Dwindle in Some Rural Regions

Wall Street Journal ^ | May 15, 2016 | ANNA WILDE MATHEWS and STEPHANIE ARMOUR

[reaganaut1]

Health-insurance customers in a growing number of mostly rural regions will have just one insurer’s plans to choose from on the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges next year, as some companies pull out of unprofitable markets.

The entire states of Alaska and Alabama are expected to have only one insurer on the health law’s signature online marketplaces next year, according to state regulators. The same is expected to be true in parts of several other states, including Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arizona and Oklahoma, state regulators said.

So far, more than 650 counties appear on track to have just one insurer on the exchanges in 2017, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, which is tracking withdrawals as they become public. That would be up from 225 in 2016, when the state of Wyoming, among other areas, already had just one ACA marketplace competitor. Of the counties in jeopardy of having only a single exchange insurer next year, 70% have populations that are mostly rural, said Cynthia Cox, a researcher at the foundation.

Disclosures of new market entries or further pullbacks will change the totals in coming months, Ms. Cox said. Filings in many states aren’t yet public, and insurers can tweak their approaches until September.

Kori Allen, a bookkeeper in Kodiak, Alaska, this year has an exchange plan from Moda Health Plan Inc., which will pull out of the state’s ACA marketplace next year. Ms. Allen, 36 years old, who receives a federal subsidy that helps with her premiums, worries about what will happen when there is only one insurer, Premera Blue Cross, offering exchange products: “It’s going to be a monopoly, basically; ‘here’s the price, take it or leave it.’”

Premera Blue Cross, which had steep losses in Alaska’s exchange last year, said it is committed to the market there.

[reaganaut1]

The plans that individuals used to be able to buy have been regulated out of existence.

[goldstategop]

Yup. That’s why I’m on Medicaid.

And millions of Americans will soon be in the same boat.

[Dilbert San Diego]

This wasn’t supposed to happen was it???

I hope that Obamacare becomes a big campaign issue. Things have not worked out the way we were told. Exchanges are goin broke and pulling out. Some insurers are pulling out. We are seeing severe double digit rate increases. Those of us covered by employer plans are seeing our employers health insurance premiums going way up, and our copays and payroll deductions increasing.

Could the 2016 election be our last chance to get rid of Obamacare?

[ground_fog]

Liberals want everybody in big cities..they hate rural America and this was planned..make people have to move to the city like cattle

[Bubba_Leroy]

Bush’s fault.

[Bubba_Leroy]

"If you like your health care plan you can keep your health care plan."

[dfwgator]

Everything is going according to plan, folks will be begging for Single-Payer in no time.

[grania]

Liberals want everybody in big cities.

Interesting point. So do "our" conservative pols. Not only that, they're allowing the old inner cities to become unliveable. They're being replaced by new high-density housing, in cities and nearby suburbs. The contractors and town officials are passing it off as "high income" or "assisted living" or "senior housing".

Does that make any sense, at all? Where are all of those high income people going to come from? And where are the lower income people and the new americans live, if not this high-concentration prison-like housing that's being built?

This is not conspiracy theory. Take a good look around at the kinds of housing that are being built, and the spiels being used to get it approved.

[combat_boots]

I accidentally saw an interview very early on in this whole OC thing, with some woman who specifically said that xxxxxxxxx millions would be on Medicaid by 2016/7, like she knew exactly what was coming.

[Pollard]

We’re in MO, a non-expanded-medicaid State. We don’t make enough to even participate in the “marketplace”. Website told us nope. Yet make too much to get medicaid so we get zilch. Hard to even see a Doctor. They won’t do business unless you have some kind of insurance. I predict that will be changing though. In fact if shillary gets in, I think we’ll be able to pay the Doc with a chicken like the old days.

[grey_whiskers]

[CottonBall]

You’re in the group that fell through the cracks the geniuses that created Obamacare didn’t bother to think about.

so sorry, it must be very frustrating.