Anthem Will Exit Health Insurance Exchange in Ohio -<br />By REED ABELSONJUNE 6, 2017<br />Anthem, one of the nation’s largest insurers and a major player in the individual insurance market created by the federal health care law, announced Tuesday<br />that it would stop offering policies in the Ohio marketplace next year.<br />Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, said the exit of insurers was “a problem not just in Ohio<br />but across the country,” and he blamed the existing law for “a declining number of viable health care choices for families and small businesses.”<br />Democrats countered that the market is shaky because of efforts by the Trump administration<br />and congressional Republicans to undermine the law, including their continued threat to stop providing critical funding to low-income individuals to better afford plans.<br />“Because they fiddled for the last five months and injected more uncertainty into the<br />insurance market, premiums have gone up and insurance companies have pulled out.”<br />Federal and state deadlines are quickly approaching this month for insurers to decide<br />if they will remain in the marketplaces and how to price their plans for 2018.<br />If Anthem were to exit the federal health insurance exchanges entirely, “there could be hundreds of thousands of<br />people without any option on the exchange,” said Cynthia Cox, an executive at the Kaiser Family Foundation.
