Anthem Will Exit Health Insurance Exchange in Ohio -
By REED ABELSONJUNE 6, 2017
Anthem, one of the nation’s largest insurers and a major player in the individual insurance market created by the federal health care law, announced Tuesday
that it would stop offering policies in the Ohio marketplace next year.
Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, said the exit of insurers was “a problem not just in Ohio
but across the country,” and he blamed the existing law for “a declining number of viable health care choices for families and small businesses.”
Democrats countered that the market is shaky because of efforts by the Trump administration
and congressional Republicans to undermine the law, including their continued threat to stop providing critical funding to low-income individuals to better afford plans.
“Because they fiddled for the last five months and injected more uncertainty into the
insurance market, premiums have gone up and insurance companies have pulled out.”
Federal and state deadlines are quickly approaching this month for insurers to decide
if they will remain in the marketplaces and how to price their plans for 2018.
If Anthem were to exit the federal health insurance exchanges entirely, “there could be hundreds of thousands of
people without any option on the exchange,” said Cynthia Cox, an executive at the Kaiser Family Foundation.
