Aetna CEO optimistic over evolving health care policy landscape
HARTFORD, Conn. - Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini said during a conference call with investors Tuesday that he is optimistic about “the next wave of health care reform,” and what he called “the evolving health care policy landscape.”
Bertolini was once a booster of the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare. Tuesday, he said that “in spite of the best intentions of Washington and industry, millions of Americans remain uninsured.”
Aetna lost $450 million selling individual policies last year, including those sold through Obamacare exchanges, and he said collectively, companies have lost billions of dollars, and most of the nonprofit companies started through the legislation have failed. In a later interview with CNBC, he noted the losses were $100 million greater than Aetna projected.
Aetna had about 965,000 people covered by individual policies at year’s end, and this year, after withdrawing from most of the places it had been selling, it expects to have 240,000 individual customers, with 190,000 of them on the Obamacare exchanges.
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Health insurance experts have said that the uncertainty about what comes after Obamacare will result in a collapse in the market in 2018, because insurers have to decide how to price those policies before September this year. In comments Tuesday, Bertolini initially seemed to confirm that view.
When asked by an analyst about what Aetna needed from Congress in order to participate in Affordable Care Act health exchanges in 2018, Bertolini replied, “We have no intention of being in the market for 2018.”
He said the company would have to submit prices in April, and with the uncertainty “there is no possible way we’d be prepared to do that.”
Bertolini said, “It is clear in the absence of a significant shift in regulatory policy, risk pools will continue to deteriorate.”
However, he said the company would consider participating in some kind of transition in coming years.
In an interview with CNBC two hours later, he said Aetna will continue to sell individual policies on exchanges in the four states where it currently participates. “The ‘18 plan will probably be business as usual,” he said. “The nearest time we could have a completely new program is 1/1/19. Eighteen will be a transition year, and we look at it like that.”
Bertolini said Aetna is talking with lawmakers, and is optimistic that the replacement for Obamacare will be affordable, will be consumer-focused, and will focus on quality.
“Preserve the good parts of the ACA,” he said, adding that the replacement also needs funding that encourages more young people to buy insurance plans.
In the CNBC interview, he criticized one Republican idea, that allowing companies to sell health insurance across state lines, would drive down costs.
“Quite frankly, the idea of selling insurance across state lines is a dated concept. Insurance products are now tightly aligned with networks,” he said. He said it wouldn’t be useful for someone to have a network of doctors and hospitals that are far from where they live.
He said Aetna wants to see “access to affordable, quality health care to all Americans.”
On Bloomberg TV, he said, “It’s easy to repeal, but the replacement has to be very carefully considered. There’s a lot of opportunities to get it right, and we need to be part of that.”