Insurance holding firm Assurant Inc. to exit health care marketplace by 2016
Source: Omaha World Herald
By Scott M. Stevens
Insurance holding company Assurant Inc. has announced its intention to exit the health insurance marketplace by 2016 and has retained investment banking firm Barclays Capital to locate a potential buyer for its health insurance and employee benefits subsidiaries.
Like the legions of health insurers that have exited the market before and after passage of the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, the reason is simple quarterly losses in the millions with seemingly no end in sight.
During the 2015 open enrollment season, Assurant Health provided insurance options through public health insurance exchanges in 16 states, including Nebraska. And at the close of 2014, Assurant insured 8,436 Nebraskans through both individual and group health insurance policy types; and thousands more at any given time through their temporary/short-term major medical policies, which provide gap protection for a specified period of time.
In the case of Assurant Health (and its more recognizable subsidiary insurers in the health insurance market, including Time, John Alden Life and Union Security Life), it appears that the ACA was the proverbial straw that broke the camels back. Heres what we know, based on a number of media outlets and an Assurant press release:
FULL story at link.
Read more: http://www.livewellnebraska.com/health/insurance-holding-firm-assurant-inc-to-exit-health-care-marketplace/article_07dd14b5-3a77-5429-b641-85f5dc5e422c.html
Assurant Health insures nearly 1 million people in the U.S.
d_legendary1
(2,586 posts)people with Pre-Exsiting conditions: GOOD! We need less predators in the health insurance business.
lamp_shade
(14,841 posts)Wilms
(26,795 posts)an insurance company??
JustABozoOnThisBus
(23,364 posts)not in this country.
If you try it, the insurance companies will flood congress with money, until they vote the insurance companies' way.
drray23
(7,637 posts)It is driving out of the market the crooks and fly by night insurance companies. Increased competition on that healthcare market is resulting in companies adjusting their practices. Those that were offering questionable health plans will be eliminated.
csziggy
(34,137 posts)For every single prescription they send out three pieces of paper - a letter explaining that they are applying the amount to the deductible, a page with the cost of the prescription, and a page with how much of the cost of the prescription was applied to the deductible and how much is still left of the deductible. Even the prescription that my husband gets that is ZERO cost gets three pages allotted to it.
And many months each prescription warrants its own envelop for the three pages. Sometimes two or three prescriptions will be stuffed into one envelope but they still include all three pages even though the explanatory letter is identical for every prescription.
We selected Assurant since they were the only plan that included all our doctors. I guess we need to get our wellness visits scheduled for this year in case the plans we're left for next year do not include our doctors!
libodem
(19,288 posts)And she was furious about the ACA from the get go. We talked about it, a little, a couple of years age. Her opinion was: What right does anyone have to hesth care?
In her mind it is a privilege for those who can afford to deserve it.
I think this move has eliminated her position.
Pretty sure having the unwashed masses receive affordable health care disturbed the whole corporate model.