Senator Lamar Alexander hosted Tennessee Insurance Commissioner Julie McPeak at a meeting of Senate Republican health committee members along with state insurance commissioners from Maine and Wisconsin to hear the commissioners’ input on providing relief from the Obamacare emergency, and also their ideas for improving America’s health coverage system in the long term.
Senator Alexander said, “We wanted to hear input from the Tennessee insurance commissioner, who has said that the Obamacare exchange in our state is ‘very near collapse,’ as well as the Wisconsin and Maine state insurance commissioners, who are seeing similar challenges in their states. The Obamacare exchanges are collapsing in Tennessee and across the country because of federal mandates, a lack of flexibility for states, increased costs and fewer choices for families. In most of our Tennessee counties, people only have one choice – we need to give more people more choices. Democrats have proposed even more federal control, but the right prescription is not more of what caused the disease.
“Republicans want to make sure that we are the rescue party, but we know that Washington, D.C., does not have all the answers. We would like to move more decisions out of Washington back to the states and put them in the hands of consumers so they can make the choices for themselves.”
Senator Alexander hosted Ms. McPeak, Ted Nickel, Wisconsin’s insurance commissioner, and Eric Cioppa, the superintendent of the Maine Bureau of Insurance. In December, Senator Alexander sent a letter to state insurance commissioners across the country seeking their input on administrative and legislative actions to stabilize the individual health insurance market and improve health coverage.
In August, Ms. McPeak described the state’s Obamacare exchange as “very near collapse,” as some insurers in the Obamacare individual insurance exchange were forced to raise their rates by some of the highest amounts in the nation—as much as 62 percent next year. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee, the state’s largest health insurer, in September announced it would no longer sell individual insurance policies in Knoxville, Nashville or Memphis, impacting 131,000 Tennesseans. This follows United Health Group's announcement earlier this year that it would no longer offer Obamacare exchange health plans in Tennessee for the 2017 plan year. There are currently 41,000 individuals in the state currently covered by these United Health Group plans. This is in addition to the 27,000 Tennesseans who lost their Community Health Alliance health plan when the co-op collapsed in 2015.
A majority of Tennesseans on the Obamacare individual insurance exchange will need to find new plans next year. In 73 out of all 95 Tennessee counties, individuals will have only one insurer to choose from when buying health insurance on the Obamacare exchange for 2017. There are 171,000 Tennesseans looking for a new plan right now because their current plan will not be offered in 2017. In 2016, every county had the choice of at least two insurers on the Obamacare exchanges.