Years after abandoning Connecticut’s small group insurance market, Bloomfield-based Cigna announced Wednesday it’s officially launching a new health plan in the state targeted at employers with 50 or fewer workers.
Cigna has received regulatory approval from the Connecticut Insurance Department to begin offering a new small group plan in partnership with New York-based Oscar, an insurance-technology company that launched in 2012 to originally target the individual insurance market.
The two have joined forces to offer a new fully-insured health plan called “Cigna + Oscar.” The insurance product is relatively new, officially debuting nationally last year in just a few markets.
Hartford Business Journal first reported news about the new health plan in March.
Cigna will begin selling the plan in Connecticut starting July 1, and it will be offered outside of the state’s health insurance exchange, Access Health CT.
The timing of the new proposed plan is noteworthy. It comes as lawmakers debate the future of the state’s health insurance marketplace, including a plan by progressive Democrats to launch a public health plan that would compete with private insurers and be available for small businesses, nonprofits and potentially others.
That has drawn the ire of Connecticut’s health insurance industry, including Cigna, which employs thousands of workers in the state.
In a letter sent to Gov. Ned Lamont last week, the CEOs of Anthem, Cigna, CVS Health, Tufts Health Plan/Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare and UnitedHealth Group said the reform plan put forward by Comptroller Kevin Lembo could threaten the insurance industry’s 50,000 jobs in the state.
Lembo hit back with a statement calling out the CEOs, which he said made a combined $100 million in compensation last year.
He said they represent an industry that has blocked repeated efforts at making health care more affordable in the state.
The plan
The Cigna + Oscar plan will be available to small businesses with between one and 50 employees and offer a range of plan options across price points, Cigna said.
It will include behavioral health benefits, access to local and nationwide networks of doctors, hospitals, and specialists, and 24/7 virtual urgent care at no cost. Co-pays for the most commonly prescribed prescriptions will be $3, Cigna said.
Cigna and Oscar will share risk equally under a reinsurance agreement for solutions offered through this strategic partnership and plan to expand the partnership over time.
