Payers

Survey: 96 percent of payers surveyed intend to stay in ACA exchanges in 2018…but with caution

Recent research from Oliver Wyman shows that although the majority of payers are offering plans on the 2018 exchanges, they're altering their geographic footprints and rate increases.

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This spring has been a roller coaster in the healthcare world. First the ACA was set going to be repealed, with the AHCA set to replace it. But in late March, House Speaker Paul Ryan pulled the AHCA bill after GOP leaders failed to secure enough votes to pass it. So for right now, the ACA remains in place.

And with the ACA comes the health insurance exchanges. Despite insurers like Humana vowing to stop offering individual plans in 2018, newly released research from Oliver Wyman shows the majority of payers surveyed intend to continue offering coverage through the exchanges.

The payers were surveyed in early April about their intentions regarding the 2018 ACA exchanges. Nintey-six percent of respondents said they intend to remain on the market, though Oliver Wyman notes that insurers can choose to drop from the exchanges at any time.

Among the payers participating in 2018, 71 percent won’t be changing their current offerings. The remaining 29 percent will be altering their offerings, mostly by increasing controls in their products and changing the availability of their metal level options.

Additionally, while 75 percent of surveyed payers plan to keep their current geographic footprint, a quarter of respondents intend to change their geographic identity. About 12.5 percent said they’ll expand their footprint and 12.5 percent said they’ll shrink it.

Despite these findings, Oliver Wyman hints at a sense of trepidation among the surveyed insurers. “This survey, along with our continued conversations with the market, reveals that payers are approaching 2018 cautiously; yet the vast majority of those surveyed intend to stay,” Oliver Wyman claims.

This discretion applies when it comes to setting rate increases before the June 21 deadline. “About half of the respondents to our survey indicated it was too early for them to determine the rate increase and that they needed more time to evaluate their 2017 risk pools and performance,” Oliver Wyman notes.

But among the other half of payers who have set their rate increases, 50 percent said they plan on increases of 10 to 20 percent. A quarter said they’ll increase rates by less than 10 percent, and another quarter said they’ll increase rates by more than 20 percent.

Oliver Wyman also pointed out that the geography and markets in which payers operate have the biggest effect on their rate increases.

The future of the ACA exchanges is still shaky. Insurers are certainly taking note of this as they approach the 2018 marketplace with caution. But at this point, it seems like the majority of payers are sticking with the exchanges.

Correction: A previous version of this article’s headline did not include the word “surveyed.” The word “surveyed” was also added to the second sentence of the second paragraph.

Photo: Minerva Studio, Getty Images

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