Healthcare Fail Hits Close to Home

After enduring a 57% increase in my healthcare insurance costs over two years, I've just been informed that my insurance carrier is dropping several of its plans, mine included. My carrier, like a handful of others, is abandoning the small company market here in New York.

While Empire issued a statement saying it has “no intentions to withdraw from the New York Small Group market,” brokers say Empire's actions, in effect, mean just that. Empire will only offer expensive, noncompetitive products to New York City small businesses with between two and 50 workers.

“They will pull the majority of sellable products, and the four or five left are all ones people don't really care about,” said one broker.

Empire is not alone in facing extreme conditions in the small group market that make it difficult to turn a profit. The insurer experienced its first year-over-year financial loss in its small group business, a trend “that cannot be sustained,” Empire said. Since late 2006, several insurers exited the small group market in New York City, including CIGNA and HealthNet.

Fewer providers obviously means higher premiums, on top of the drastic increases we've seen to date. New York state has always had a disastrous healthcare insurance market (because we've had key elements of ObamaCare before the feds spread these toxic concepts across the nation), ObamaCare made it that much worse, and now the fallout is finally starting to crack the system. I'll have to see what my new options are but I fear that healthcare insurance costs may have finally reached the tipping point - as a small businessperson I absorb all the increase in costs - where I choose to self-insure. That'll be five more added to the rolls of "the uninsured." Way to go geniuses in Albany and Washington!