Health insurer Aetna Inc said on Wednesday it will exit the 2018 Obamacare individual insurance market in Delaware and Nebraska – the two remaining states where it had offered the plans.
Aetna had previously announced plans to exit the individual commercial market in Virginia and Iowa.
It has now “completely exited the exchanges,” the company said in an emailed statement.
Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives last week voted to undo the Affordable Care Act, often called Obamacare, the signature domestic achievement of former President Barack Obama.
But even if the bill – known as the American Health Care Act – is passed by the Senate it would not solve a critical outstanding issue for insurers looking at 2018: Will the government continue to fund the cost-sharing subsidies that help individuals pay for care?
Health insurers have said they cannot plan amid the uncertainty.
Aetna projected more than $200 million in losses from its exchange plan businesses this year following a loss of $700 million for 2014 through 2016.
The insurer attributed the losses to “marketplace structural issues, that have led to co-op failures and carrier exits, and subsequent risk pool deterioration.”
Aetna said it had 964,000 individual commercial plan members as of the end of 2016, but that number dropped to 255,000 at the end of March.
(Reporting by Deena Beasley in Los Angeles; Editing by Sandra Maler and Matthew Lewis)
