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July 11, 2017 at 05:57 AM
The New York Department of Financial Services on July 6 said that no insurer participating in the state’s Affordable Care Act health insurance exchange will cap the number of people who enroll for coverage, as insurers offering plans on other state health exchanges across the country have done.
New York’s contracts with insurers in its exchange, New York State of Health, do not allow enrollment caps, according to the state’s Department of Health.
(Related: ACA Exchanges Report Strong Early Application Activity)
“It requires insurers to sell policies to all individuals that the marketplace determines eligible to purchase health insurance during open enrollment, or a special enrollment period,” the health department said in an emailed statement.
As uncertainty over the future of the Affordable Care Act looms, insurers across the country are looking to cap enrollment in an effort to stabilize their finances.
Health Partners, based in Bloomington, Minnesota, and Medica and UCare in Minnesota capped their enrollment this year. In Kansas, Medica also put a cap on the plan offered through the marketplace. Community Health Choice, one of only three insurers offering plans in Houston, saw a spike in enrollment from 40,000 two years ago, to roughly 145,000, according to Modern Healthcare, a trade publication. The plan’s executive vice president and chief operating officer told the publication that the insurer can’t handle many more enrollees.
In mid-May, the state noted in a report that more than 3.6 million people were enrolled through the state’s health exchange under the Affordable Care Act at the end of the 2017 open enrollment period, an increase of roughly 800,000 since the third open enrollment period.
