Having already rejected doing business on California's health insurance exchange next year, insurer UnitedHealth Group will now join Aetna in pulling out of California's individual market entirely, according to a report by the Los Angeles Times.
Aetna announced last month it would discontinue renewing plans for its current 49,000 or so individual customers, eclipsed in market share by Kaiser Permanente and Anthem Blue Cross, which hold a combined 87 percent of individual policies in California. UnitedHealth has an even smaller market share with just 8,000 individual customers, according to the report. Aetna and UnitedHealth will continue selling plans to businesses.
A UnitedHealth spokeswoman told the LA Times that because the nation's largest health insurer's individual customer base in California "has always been relatively small … it has become more difficult to administer these plans in a cost-effective way for our members."
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