Anthem Inc. Stops Obamacare Coverage in Ohio
Anthem Inc. was one of the last national companies that remained in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, but this week, the multi-state insurer has decided to leave Ohio.
The health insurer, which is the only Obamacare insurer to cover the whole of Ohio, sold individual health plans in all 88 counties of the state this year. As per a report from CNBC, Anthem explained that it was "a difficult decision" to drop out of the Ohio market, but due to uncertainty whether President Donald Trump and the Republican Congress are going to continue reimbursing insurers for key Obamacare subsidies that decrease low-income consumers' health costs, it seems like it had to be done.
"Anthem's exit from Ohio could be the tip of the iceberg," Cynthia Cox, associate director at The Kaiser Family Foundation, told Business Insider this week. "Their reasons for leaving don't appear to be specific to Ohio, rather about political and regulatory uncertainty coming from the White House and Congress. If Anthem leaves the market nationally, there could be hundreds of thousands of people without any exchange insurer."
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According to a Bloomberg report, Anthem's decision to stop the coverage in Ohio will leave about 13,000 people without any coverage option under the Obamacare program next year. The worse thing is, the number may even increase to 300,000 if other health insurers in other states do the same.
With Anthem's political concerns taken into consideration, there is a big possibility that they could also drop out of the other 13 states they cover if the issues do not get resolved by the time the insurer is required to submit their plans for 2018 later this month.
In President Trump's speech during his recent visit to Ohio, which was mentioned in the said Bloomberg report, he called Obamacare a failure, saying: "Obamacare is in a total death spiral and the problems will only get worse if Congress fails to act. Obamacare is dead."
To solve this problem, Trump said he and the Senate are working on an Obamacare replacement bill. However, he also said that while "the Republicans are trying very hard" to get the bill passed, the Democrats are allegedly in their way.
