United Health Care, one of the leading health insurance provider in the country, just announced to leave the Individual Health Insurance market in California. This move follows Aetna‘s recent announcement to stop selling individual policies and discontinue services for all individual policyholders in California by the end of the year.
With only 8,000 individual policy holders in California, United Healthcare is not a big player in the California market and most policies were sold through Cosco. Nevertheless the competition of individual insurance with Aetna and United Healthcare leaving the California market, will be less. This opinion is also share by California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones who said its exit isn’t a good result for consumers.
Solid Health Insurance Service will assist you to switch into the plans of the state exchange and will compare the private exchanges which will remain in the California market. We therefore suggest to wait until October so that you have a true comparison. Cigna remains until December 2014 in the individual market and might be a good alternative to the plans of California’s State Exchange, Covered California.