North Carolina’s top insurance regulator has come out in favor of changes to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, penning an op-ed in the state’s News & Observer.
A consistent supporter of the ACA, Wayne Goodwin reaffirmed that the healthcare law provided “positive and much-needed reforms” but also emphasized the need for changes to the way it is being implemented in the state.
“Our state’s failures to expand Medicaid and to create a state-controlled insurance exchange have consequences,” Goodwin wrote. “As health insurers merge and consolidate, withdraw from our market and reduce the areas in which they offer plans, North Carolinians are left with fewer choices and less access to healthcare coverage.
“Having fewer insurers could jeopardize the progress we’ve made in reducing the number of uninsured people.”
Goodwin called on the federal government to “state the conversation” with state regulators like himself on how to better protect consumers from some of the fallout that has occurred since the law’s implementation.
The op-ed comes after news spread that Goodwin had written a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell warning that health reform is driving up insurance costs, reducing consumer options and making it impossible for insurers to profitably sell policies in North Carolina.
Most recently, he said, all three insurers on the federal insurance exchange have eliminated agent commissions for selling individual policies in the state.
“Insurers cannot continue to have annual losses in the hundreds of millions and be expected to continue ‘business as usual,’” Goodwin wrote in his letter to Burwell. “I am highly concerned insurers may withdraw from the individual market in North Carolina altogether…if North Carolina continues along this path and we have no carriers, what do we do?”
Earlier this week, even more shocking news hit the insurance committee: the state’s largest health insurance company, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, said it may not offer ACA plans next year.
Due to significant losses, the insurer said it could pull out of the individual market in the state, forcing an estimated 300,000 policyholders to search for other policies.
