President Obama met with leading insurance executives Monday to discuss how to work with them on Obamacare, as the administration hopes to stop the bleeding from insurers leaving the marketplace.
Obama met with leaders of officials from Humana, Cigna, Highmark Health, Molina Healthcare and several local Blue Cross Blue Shield insurers, according to a White House official. The meeting included top administration officials including Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell and senior adviser Valerie Jarrett.
The subject of the meeting was to discuss ways that insurers and the administration can use to “encourage new customers to sign up and returning customers to shop around and re-enroll,” the official said.
Obama also sent a letter to the CEO of every insurer that will offer plans next year, detailing recent actions the administration has taken to help them.
Obama detailed a series of steps that the administration is going to use to get more people to sign up for Obamacare this year.
“Secretary Burwell has developed a data-driven plan to find and enroll those who still lack coverage, including by stepping up the outreach activities that worked best over the last three years,” the president said.
Other steps include working with the Department of Treasury to reach out to uninsured people who paid the individual mandate penalty in 2015 for not having health insurance.
The meeting and letter underscore how pivotal the upcoming open enrollment could be. It also comes a few weeks before the deadline for insurers to file qualified health plans with the administration on Sept. 23 to be offered on the exchanges.
Obamacare has been hit by a slew of bad headlines in recent weeks, including news of premium increases in some states of up to 60 percent or more. There are also concerns about a lack of competition after defections from major insurers Aetna and UnitedHealth.
A recent study from the consulting firm Avalere Health concluded that about a third of U.S. counties will only have one Obamacare insurer, sparking concerns about a lack of competition and higher plans for consumers.
Obama said the White House would host a Millenial Outreach and Engagement Summit Sept. 27 focusing on how to enroll more youth in the marketplace this year.
Experts have said the administration needs to boost enrollment to bring costs and prices down. Without additional enrollment of younger or healthier people, insurers could lose money from high claims.
Part of the reason that prices have raised so much for 2017 is to compensate for insurers setting prices too low when the exchanges opened in 2014.
