Aetna Pulling Out. Can Obamacare be saved?
Big private insurance companies bailing out of a government-sponsored healthcare program, complaining about financial losses. Hundreds of thousands of customers lose their health plans. Terminations are especially severe in rural counties, leaving virtually no competition. Total enrollment drops.
Obamacare, 2016? No, Medicare, 1998-2002. During that time, insurers canceled nearly half of their contracts to participate in the managed care program then known as Medicare+Choice and now called Medicare Advantage. Between 300,000 and 1 million customers lost their plans. Total managed care enrollments fell to 4.6 million from 6.4 million. The future of the program was very much in doubt.
And yet, enrollments in Medicare Advantage today number 17.2 million.
What happened? An answer comes from Sabrina Corlette and Jack Hoadley of Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute. In a new study published by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, they apply lessons from that experience and other healthcare reforms to the state of the Affordable Care Act individual exchange.