A major health insurance company is leaving Montana, saying it’s no longer profitable to do business in the state. The move will force about 11,000 Montanans to choose different health plans next year. It’s part of a nationwide trend.
PacificSource is one of three insurance companies that offer health plans on the Affordable Care Act Marketplace, also known as Obamacare.
The company says it will leave the marketplace in Montana, Oregon and Idaho next year. In Montana, PacificSource is also leaving the private insurance market larger employers use for their workers.
Five insurance companies are leaving several states nationwide.
That’s largely because Congress didn’t renew enhanced subsidies that helped more people afford ACA plans. Monthly premiums doubled for some consumers, and ACA enrollment dropped by nearly a million people.
Louise Norris is a health policy expert with healthinsurance.org. She says more people are expected to drop their plans as they struggle to pay for them.
“When the market gets smaller, when fewer people are enrolled, they tend to be the less healthy people.”
That means higher costs for insurance companies.
The federal government is also rolling out new rules that will prevent asylum seekers or refugees from receiving the lower premiums that remain in place. There will be more paperwork to verify your income to receive that financial assistance as well. Insurance companies and experts like Norris expect that will drive more people off ACA plans.
Norris says consumers will have fewer choices as insurers leave the market. But she's not too worried. We saw this trend play out around 10 years ago.
“At that point, there were an awful lot of places that just had one participating insurer," Norris says. "We even had some areas of the country where there were doubts as to whether there’d be any participating insurers, and we’re nowhere near that level.”
She says the remaining financial help for monthly premiums will likely keep enough people enrolled to avoid that doomsday scenario, even in a state like Montana that will have only two insurance companies offering ACA plans.
