Aetna Better Health on Thursday put the state of Illinois on notice.
The insurer said it might terminate Medicaid contracts in the wake of the state’s funding crisis.
Illinois currently owes Aetna more than $698 million, according to Crain’s Chicago Business. The insurance company filed its intent to exit the state with some optimism that the issue could be resolved.
“We have filed notices of intent to terminate our contracts but hope those terminations will ultimately be unnecessary upon resolution of the current Medicaid funding crisis,” Aetna spokesman T.J. Crawford wrote in an email to Crain’s. “In other words, no final decision has been made.”
Aetna calculates Illinois will owe it almost $1.3 billion by the end of 2017. The insurer currently covers about 235,000 low-income and disabled recipients in the state. Aetna’s exit would force these individuals onto another health plan, which may compel them to change their networks of doctors and hospitals.
Aetna Better Health President Laurie Brubaker cautioned the state back in June that the insurer may exit if Illinois did not pass a budget by the beginning of July. Illinois currently owes $3 billion to its Medicaid providers, per Crain’s. Illinois Medicaid is Aetna Better Health’s only source of business.
“The organizational and investor tolerance for Aetna Better Health’s growing financial risk — note that the Aetna enterprise must advance cash to Aetna Better Health to sustain operations — is waning and will soon reach a breaking point,” Brubaker wrote in a June court filing obtained by Crain’s.
During a holiday session Tuesday, the Illinois Senate overrode Gov. Bruce Rauner’s veto of a $36 billion budget that would raise $5 billion with increases to the state’s personal income tax rate and corporate tax rate. The budget will now go before the House, also controlled by Democrats, for an override vote later this week.
Date:July 04, 2017