For the past few years, trying to sell individual major medical insurance has been about as popular as trying to sell anchovy ice cream.
But now eHealth Inc. — one of the web brokers that has been trying shift more toward selling Medicare plans, and away from selling individual major medical insurance — says the health insurers still in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) public exchange plan market seem to be feeling better about the market.
Seventeen carriers participated in a recent eHealth issuer survey. Those carriers provide health coverage for about 80 million people.
About 60% of the insurers said they intend to expand their ACA public exchange market participation in 2020.
Just one carrier said that it intends to get out of the market.
The Background
The individual major medical insurance market has always been a tough market, because insurers have struggled to find ways to balance the need to manage claims risk against public hostility toward business moves that hurt people with health problems.
Many states have imposed, and removed, tight restrictions on pricing and underwriting over the years.
Congress created the ACA public exchange system in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, one of the two laws in the ACA package. The exchange system is supposed to be a web-based health insurance supermarket. It's supposed to give consumers a way to shop for high-quality, somewhat standardized coverage on an apples-to-apples basis.
Many health insurers jumped into the exchange system enthusiastically when the system opened for business, in October 2013. The first coverage sold began to take effect in January 2014.
The exchange program suffered from severe administrative glitches in the first year, and claims were higher than many of the issuers had expected.
