By Lyle Adriano
Community Health Options, a Maine-based health insurance co-op, declared yesterday that December 26 will be the last day for consumers to purchase an individual plan from the co-op via the federal insurance exchange HealthCare.gov.
The co-op was founded 2011 in Maine, and only started selling insurance in New Hampshire this year. The group was responsible for more than 80% of the individual plans bought by state residents through the federal marketplace.
It came to the decision due to two major factors: the significant growth in enrollment over the past two years, which the co-op could barely keep up with, and higher than anticipated claims for 2015.
“We need to be responsible and work within the reserves that we have available,” Community Health Options Chief Executive Kevin Lewis said in a statement. “I think it’s a responsible measure in light of our current membership and the growth trajectory that we’re on.”
Residents who already have coverage through the co-op will not be affected in any way and their premium rates will remain unchanged, the New Hampshire Insurance department reassured consumers.
Lewis stressed that the group is “not in the slightest” danger of closing, yet this decision to pause sales makes Community Health Options the fourteenth of the ACA’s 23 nonprofit cooperatives to either stop accepting new business or close their doors altogether.
Although Lewis did not lay blame to politicians for the co-op’s struggles, other group leaders have pointed a clear finger in that direction.
Earlier this week, the CEO of Arches Health Plan in Utah told lawmakers in the state that the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight doomed the nonprofit insurers by pledging millions through the ACA’s “risk corridor” program only to diminish the sum when Congressional legislation scaled back support for the group.
Kentucky’s co-op leader also cited bureaucratic troubles as a trigger for financial troubles, going so far as to label the group’s failure as “a direct result of lower-than-promised risk corridor payments.”
