Saturday, December 11, 2010

Aetna Will Probably Abandon the Individual Major Medical Market

Aetna has made another stupid move that will most likely cause them to abandon the individual major medical market in the next 18 months. Always a pain in the butt to deal with and customer service that is really cuss-tomer service.

Their latest move will put their very small block of individual major medical business into a death spiral.

Obamacare is taking its' toll on the individual health insurance market, leading to fewer choices and higher premiums. Parent's looking for children's health insurance have almost no options except to add them on as a dependent to their own plan.

Obamacrap has also killed the maternity benefit as an option in Georgia.

Last week Aetna sent a notice to agents that compensation will be cut drastically. New business comp is half what it was before. As if that wasn't enough, they also are cutting existing comp on in force renewal business by 70%.

The result will be agents will be forced to abandon Aetna as a resource for new business (no big loss there) and will move as many healthy clients as possible to new health insurance companies leaving Aetna with only the sick people.

Aetna's block of business will deteriorate to the point that premiums will be insufficient to cover claims, leading to larger and larger rate increases going forward. The policyholder's left behind will be held captive with no place to go and few options. Either they will have to pay the higher premium or drop coverage and go without for at least 6 months until they can get into Obama's PCIP program.

This is just another stupid carrier trick.

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