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October 28, 2015 at 12:06 PM
Arches Health Plan — the non-profit, member-owned CO-OP in Utah — has become the latest CO-OP to announce that it will go out of business at the end of the year.
The Utah Insurance Department is putting the plan in receivership and intends to supervise the runoff of the Arches policies that are now in force, department officials say.
Todd Kiser, the Utah commissioner, said he will look for ways to work with other insurers to fill the coverage void left by Archers’ demise in rural areas of the state.
Drafters of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) created the Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans (CO-OP) program in an effort to increase the level of competition in the private health insurance market, and to ease the concerns of lawmakers who wanted all residents of each state to have access to a government-run health plan.
Arches organizers used $85 million in CO-OP loan guarantees to start the company. Organizers did a better job than organizers of many other CO-OPs at managing growth. They said they hoped to attract 20,524 enrollees by the end of 2014, and they succeeded at attracting 22,397 enrollees, or about 9 percent more than they had predicted, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (HHS OIG).
The carrier reported a $20 million net loss for 2014 on $53 million in premium revenue. The carrier averaged $2,400 in premium revenue and $2,700 in claims per 2014 enrollee.
The company was hoping to reduce the net loss to $6.3 million this year.
