While Medicare agents are deep into AEP, many FMOs and agents will soon be helping Under 65 clients navigate their health insurance options. If you are not in the ACA market, it may be due to an opinion the ACA market lacks stability and a result, the market is not for you. The ACA market continues to show resiliency and may an opportunity for you to diversify your business. Healthcare Dive published an article on the resiliency of the ACA market. Read the full article here.
Key Insights:
- The ACA market has proven extremely resilient. Following initial years of insurer uncertainty and skyrocketing prices, premiums in benchmark plans offered on Healthcare.gov have now dropped 8% since the 2018 coverage year, CMS said. The second-cheapest silver plans in the marketplace are called “benchmark plans” because the government uses them as a benchmark to calculate tax credits to lower the cost of coverage.
- Thirty-eight states use the online federal exchange Healthcare.gov to sell ACA plans to their citizens. In 2021, four states will see double-digit drops in average benchmark plan premiums for 27-year-olds: Iowa, Maine, New Hampshire and Wyoming, CMS said.
- And insurer participation is also ramping up — for the third year in a row, according to the administration. The percentage of Healthcare.gov enrollees with access to just one insurer dropped to just 4% in 2021, down from 29% in 2018. And the portion of counties with only a single insurer dropped from about 50% in 2018 to 24% in 2020 and 9% in 2021.
More than three-quarters of enrollees will have access to at least three issuers in 2021, CMS said.