Humana Leaving Some States Over Obamacare Costs

Humana said Wednesday it will stop offering policies in some states in 2017 because of costs associated with the Affordable Care Act. It is the second healthcare insurer in recent days to make such an announcement.

UnitedHealth Group, the nation's largest insurer, said in April it will offer policies in only a "handful" of states next year. 

Humana said the number of people who bought policies on the Obamacare exchanges dropped 21 percent — to 875,7000 from 1.1 million in the first quarter of 2015, Forbes reports. That helped bring about a 46 percent profit fall, which also was affected by an impending merger with Aetna.

"Humana is in the process of finalizing plans for its ACA-compliant individual commercial medical market offerings in 2017," the company wrote in a statement.

"Humana anticipates proposing a number of changes to retain a viable product for individual consumers, where feasible, and address persistent risk selection challenges. Such changes may include certain statewide market and product exits both on and off exchange, service area reductions and pricing commensurate with anticipated levels of risk by state."

Humana did not indicate how many markets would be affected, The Washington Examiner noted. 

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