Major health insurer Anthem is leaving Maine’s Obamacare marketplace next year because it remains “volatile.”
It is the latest defection from the insurer, which has been worried about the uncertainty in the exchanges for 2018.
Anthem said in a statement that planning and pricing for Obamacare plans has become difficult due to a “shrinking and deteriorating individual market, as well as continual changes and uncertainty in federal operations, rules and guidance, including the regulation of the health insurance tax on fully insured coverage and continued uncertainty around the future of cost-sharing reduction subsidies.”
Anthem has given similar reasons for pulling out of other states such as Virginia and scaling back in states such as Kentucky.
The health insurance tax was temporarily halted this year but goes back into effect next year.
The Senate was in bipartisan talks to stabilize the marketplaces through funding the cost-sharing reduction subsidies, which reimburse insurers for lowering out-of-pocket costs for low-income Obamacare customers. However, those talks collapsed last week after the White House and Speaker Paul Ryan opposed any bipartisan deal.
Anthem said it would also scale back efforts to sell plans outside Obamacare in three of Maine’s counties.
Obamacare’s exchanges reside in the individual market, which is used by people who don’t get an insurance plan through an employer.
