Rocky Mountain Health Plans – GJ insurer pulls out of exchange | GJSentinel.com
Grand Junction – Four Colorado health insurance companies, including Rocky Mountain Health Plans, retrenched for 2017 by reducing or eliminating individual plans on the state’s health-insurance exchange.
The business model is broken, at least for Rocky….
By remaining on the exchange via Monument Health, Rocky Mountain Health Plans will be able to return in 2018, which Steve ErkenBrack, president and CEO, said it hoped to do.
Rocky Mountain has a long history of commitment to making health care accessible, “so this is not something we do lightly,” ErkenBrack said.
High costs in parts of the Western Slope drove Rocky Mountain Health Plans’ decision, ErkenBrack said.
“In some other parts of Colorado, the (medical-loss ratio) exceeds 200 percent, which means for every dollar in premium we take in, we pay out more than two dollars in claims,” ErkenBrack said. “This is neither fair nor sustainable. So, we have made the decision to discontinue the products that have not worked, and go forward with the clinically integrated model that has been effective to date.” (emphasis added)
Rocky Mountain Health Plans is seeking a 34.6 percent rate increase for 2017.
Rocky Mountain Health Plans’ withdrawal from the rest of the Western Slope leaves Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield as the only insurer in the region.
Randy Pfifer, a broker in the region comments on the problems created by there only being one insurance carrier in most of the western slope region..
Rocky Mountain Health Plans’ discontinuance of its plans is “just a disaster for the consumer,” said Randy Pifer, a broker with Active Insurance Solutions in Grand Junction, likening the loss of a carrier to compete with Anthem on the Western Slope to a single-payer system.
Customers will have to rewrite their policies as they prepare for 2017 and “the opportunity for distress for the consumer is just mammoth,” Pifer said.
Indeed it is a disaster. The Colorado western slope already had some of the most expensive rates, not only in the state, but in the nation. This will only make it worse.
