RUSH:”Anthem Insurance to Exit Nevada’s Obamacare Exchange and Almost Half of Georgia’s Counties in 2018 — American health insurance giant Anthem announced [yesterday] that it will exit the Obamacare exchange in Nevada and will stop offering plans in roughly half of Georgia’s counties next year.” There’s something that didn’t make this story. Certain Anthem customers in New York City and state have recently received an email — a letter, if you will –from Anthem saying, “Guess what?
“We’re ending your coverage. We are terminating your policy. Your options are to go get a private policy at this elsewhere location.” But there isn’t that location. There isn’t that option. The option presented to current Anthem customers doesn’t exist. They’re just pulling out. Anthem “stated that it will offer ‘catastrophic plans’ in which Americans under 30-years-old or low-income citizens can purchase outside of Nevada’s exchange. Anthem said that the individual market remains ‘volatile.’
“Anthem suggested in a statement that a deteriorating marketplace and uncertainty regarding the future of Obamacare fueled their exit from [Nevada].” This in addition to saying they “will only offer Obamacare plans in 85 of Georgia’s 159 counties … Earlier this month Anthem revealed that they will pull out of 16 of 19 regions in California in 2018.” Anthem is pulling out of America, essentially, here. “The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reported recently that next year 1,332 counties will only have one health insurer on the Obamacare exchanges.
“The CMS also reported that 40 counties currently do not have any health insurers on the Obamacare marketplaces.” By the way, this Centers for Medicare Medicaid Services, CMS? These are the people who run Obamacare, and when they were selling the public on Obamacare, they lied their heads off about how many exchanges there would be and how plentiful the choices would be and how affordable the options would be — and yet it’s just another insurer pulling out.
Now, what’s interesting is that the media hasn’t covered Anthem’s decision to cancel some policies there. I don’t know how widespread it is, but they are not offering any individual plan alternatives in New York City. And there’s not a single report about Anthem leaving the exchange markets in New York. Is the media’s ignoring that, I wonder, or maybe they haven’t figured it out.
