Just hours after
calling off
its billion-dollar merger with Aetna, Humana announced it will no longer sell
health coverage on the Affordable Care Act insurance exchanges starting in 2018.
The Louisville-based insurer said that after analyzing its membership
following the open enrollment period that ended in January, it sees no sign that
the individual market's risk pool is balancing out.
Humana previously
pulled the plug on its off-exchange individual plans, so after this year it will
cease to have any footprint in the individual market.
The retreat is a
blow to the ACA exchanges and the individual market as a whole, which is in the
dark on what direction health care regulation is headed. Insurers have said they
can't commit to participating in the exchanges until Congress assures them that
measures will be put in place to keep the individual market afloat while the
federal administration works to repeal and replace the healthcare
law.
The exchanges attracted older, sicker members that use a lot of
medical care and drive up costs for health insurers, which have responded by
raising premiums, tightening networks and reducing the number of plans they
sell.
Aetna also pulled out of exchange plans in 11 states for 2017,
though a federal judge last month said Aetna's decision may have been driven not
by its financial losses, but to
make good on
repeated threats that it would exit some exchanges if the U.S. Justice
Department sued to block its tie-up with Humana.
Humana now sells
on-exchange coverage in 11 states, down from 15 last year. Its exit means that
hundreds of thousands of members will be forced to find a new
insurer.
Humana ended 2016 with about 650,000 exchange plan members, but
said last
week that its membership as of the end of open enrollment Jan. 31 was about
204,000.