‘Senior officials’ want to close HealthCare.gov, exec says

Scott Flanders, the chief executive officer of eHealth Inc., said today that he thinks the Trump administration wants to shut down HealthCare.gov

Related: HealthCare.gov posts first Trump-era results

Former President Barack Obama’s U.S. Department of Health and Human Services set up HealthCare.gov to provide Affordable Care Act exchange administration services for states that are unwilling or unable to handle ACA exchange enrollment services themselves.

“I’ve heard from two senior officials in the administration that it is their ambition to shut down HealthCare.gov,” Flanders told securities analysts today during conference call.

Even if HealthCare.gov continues to operate, it might become a health plan information site, rather than an enrollment and e-commerce site, Flanders said.

Once more people realize that running HealthCare.gov costs $1.9 billion per year, pressure to revamp it is likely to increase, Flanders predicted.

Flanders’ company, the Mountain View, California-based parent of eHealthInsurance.com, held the conference call to go over fourth-quarter earnings.

The company reported a net loss of $17 million for the quarter on $44 million in revenue, compared with a net loss of $12 million on $50 million in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2015.

The number of relationships with Medicare plan enrollees increased 33 percent, to 304,900, but the number of relationships with users of commercial individual major medical coverage fell 28 percent, to 360,600.

Flanders said policymakers have to make big changes soon if they want to see insurers offer commercial individual coverage in 2018.

The market has started to collapse, and the collapse is accelerating, Flanders said.