Managers of the Maryland Health Connection — Maryland's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) exchange system – have come out with their plan menu.
The Maryland Health Benefit Exchange (MHBE) says it expects to offer at least six major medical carriers and 10 providers of stand-alone dental coverage.
The medical carriers, or "qualified health plan" (QHP) providers, are:
- Aetna (NYSE:AET).
- CareFirst.
- Coventry,
- Evergreen Health Cooperative.
- Kaiser.
- United HealthCare (NYSE:UNH).
The QHP list does not include Cigna (NYSE:CI) or WellPoint (NYSE:WLP).
The QHP list does include CareFirst — the holder of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield licenses for Maryland — and Evergreen.
Evergreen is one of the new nonprofit, member-owned cooperative health plans spawned by the PPACA Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan provision.
One of the companies on the QHP list, Aetna, recently completed efforts to acquire another company on the list, Coventry.