The Malloy administration has elected to not take part in letting health insurers offer their customers one more year of plans discontinued because of the Affordable Care Act, officials announced today.
Gov. Dannel Malloy said in a statement that insurers in the state have told his representatives that they would not renew the plans even if they were allowed to do so. Additionally, there would be no requirement that the plans would have the same pricing.
State insurance officials were also concerned that offering the old plans could destabilize the insurance market and lead to prices between 15 percent and 20 percent compared to this year.
“The truth is that the solution offered last week won’t work for Connecticut,” Malloy said of President Obama’s recent offer to allow cancelled plans to exist through 2014. “To those who think we should have a special session because there’s some magical way for us to fix the issue, I say you’re wrong.”
Connecticut’s decision today follows similar announcements in Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island and New York.
Officials are now pushing people who need insurance to shop on the Access Health CT Exchange. The exchange is going to embed staff directly with some private insurers to help residents with the transition to new plans. Malloy has also asked the exchange the extend the enrollment deadline by one week, to Dec. 23.
There are more than 66,000 people covered by individual health insurance policies in Connecticut this year, the state Department of Insurance said in a memo released today. More than half — 58 percent — have not renewed their policies for 2014.
Insurance officials said that 35 percent of Connecticut residents who received replacement letters from their insurers this year were not due to ACA regulations and standards, but rather represented business decisions by individual market insurers, who completely revamp all plans every three years.
State Senate Minority Leader John McKinney, R-Fairfield, said he was disappointed with the decision to not convene the legislature to amend state law to allow the cancelled policies to continue in 2014.
“Tens of thousands of people in Connecticut are going to lose their health insurance this year because of Obamacare and Governor Malloy’s decision,” McKinney said.
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