Insurance Giant’s Drop in Small-Group Plans Could Be Obamacare Trend

More Americans are enrolled in individual health insurance plans. In part, though, that’s because under Obamacare fewer are enrolled in group plans. And one health care analyst says this may be the beginning of a trend.

WellPoint Inc., the Indianapolis-based health insurance giant, reported in its latest quarterly earnings that its small-group business fell more than expected.

WellPoint said it ended 218,000 (or 12 percent) of those plans because employers dropped their group health coverage, and cited Obamacare’s tax credits as a reason for the shift,  J.K. Wall wrote in the Indianapolis Business Journal.

Edmund Haislmaier, senior research fellow in health policy studies at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal that the drop in WellPoint’s employer group coverage “is in line with what we were seeing in the first quarter” for the insurance industry — a decrease in group plans but an increase in individual plans.

Haislmaier said many smaller businesses have dropped group coverage plans in instances where they have a higher number of low-income workers who would qualify for subsidies to buy insurance on Obamacare’s federal and state-run exchanges.

Businesses with 50 or fewer full-time workers are exempt from Affordable Care Act requirements that employers offer health insurance to workers or pay a fine. Haislmaier said:

Businesses also are dropping plans because some of these lower-income employees actually do better if they are dropped from their current employer plans and go on the Obamacare exchanges to buy individual health coverage.