Largest Health Insurer Calls It Quits

Jun 12, 2016
2 min read

United Healthcare, the largest health insurer and 6th largest company in the U.S., will no longer offer health coverage to individuals in most states. This applies to those of you with Affordable Care Act (ACA) compliant policies and older, grandfathered policies. If you're reading this and have individual UHC coverage, it's likely you will be one of the millions affected by this news. UHC plans will end December 31 this year, which means come October and November, we need to discuss your new options and get you enrolled by January 1, 2017.

This move comes after UHC lost nearly $475 million last year and is on pace to lose another $650 million this year. And they're not the only company crying wolf. The other top companies have also reported hundreds of millions of dollars in losses thanks to insurmountable uninsured Marketplace enrollees.

Skyrocketing medical expenses are to blame as more and more previously uninsured people take advantage of government subsidies to afford area plans, according to Bruce Japsen at Forbes. This withdrawal from public exchanges means less competition and likely increasing premiums. UHC offered some of the best coverage at the lowest prices throughout much of the south.

Now that UHC is pulling out, does this mean other companies like Humana and BlueCross will follow suit? Not so fast, says a study by Urban Institute/Robert Wood Johnson (RWJF) found in a Bloomberg blog by Sara Hansard because they're not the only game in town with companies like BlueCross and Humana offering comparable coverage at comparable rates.