UnitedHealthcare Drops Obamacare Plans in Texas

UnitedHealthcare, a major health insurer, will no longer sell insurance on the Affordable Care Act marketplace in Texas next year, according to a letter filed with state regulators.

Texas is one of several states where the health insurer will stop offering plans on Healthcare.gov, the marketplace created under President Obama’s signature health law. The insurer, saying it faced unsustainable financial losses, had already indicated it would stop offering its plans through the exchange to potential customers in Georgia, Arkansas and Michigan.

The decision to drop out of the exchanges “does not impact” other UnitedHealthcare plans in Texas, such as plans offered by employers, wrote Kandice Sanaie, the company’s director of regulatory affairs, in a letter to Texas Department of Insurance Commissioner David Mattax.

On a conference call with analysts earlier Tuesday, UnitedHealthcare's chief executive Stephen Hemsley said the company would continue to offer plans on the exchange “in only a handful of states,” according to CNN.

The company has said it lost $475 million on the Affordable Care Act exchanges nationwide last year, and it expected those losses to continue.

UnitedHealthcare served 795,000 people nationwide on public exchanges as of the end of the first quarter of 2016, but it expects to have only 650,000 public exchange members by December, the company told CNN. The company's Texas-specific data was not immediately available.

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