2017 NY Health Insurance is going thru some big shake ups in the individual market.
As I have mentioned in numerous prior blogs on this subject (ny-individual-health-insurance-2017-changes ), the individual health insurance market in NY is changing. Those changes revolve around ever increasing cost pressures and constantly shrinking provider networks. There are even some changes that are more dramatic…full withdrawal from the individual market.
One of the newer and more cost effective carriers in the marketplace, Oscar Health Insurance announced recently that they are making some big changes to their provider network in 2017. The declining network size comes on top of a requested 16% rate increase that Oscar has filed for 2017. You can read the blog from the President of Oscar HERE
Empire BC/BS just announced that they are withdrawing 42 plans from both Off and On exchange plans in NY for 2017. While EBCBS no longer works with brokers on individual plans in NY since March 2016, we feel this was due to EBCBS wishing to decrease enrollments in their individual plans and limit new enrollments via brokers. You can see the plans that are to be withdrawn HERE . That is not a good sign of where EBCBS wants to be in the future of the individual market.
United Healthcare Oxford has also announced they will NOT be offering plans OFF exchange in NY for 2017 and is withdrawing from that market completely. They will offer their United Healthcare COMPASS network plan only via NYSOH for 2017.
With all of the changes coming up, our prior experience working with the carriers, and what I see from the carriers as to what sort of business they are looking to write, my suggestion to most on Long Island and NYC is to choose between either Oscar or Care Connect. These two companies seem to welcome new business and are trying to pivot towards smaller but quality provider networks where information sharing and cost controls are paramount.
Please keep checking back as updates are added.