ACA market news: Cigna expanding, Centene scaling back

One of the five largest health insurers in the U.S. plans on expanding its offerings on health insurance marketplaces for 2017, going in the opposite direction of rivals Humana and UnitedHealthcare when it comes to participation on Affordable Care Act exchanges.

Cigna announced July 26 it has notified insurance regulators about plans to offer coverage on the exchanges in Chicago, the Raleigh-Durham market of North Carolina, as well as Richmond, Virginia, and northern parts of the state, according to The Hill and the Chicago Tribune.

Cigna had offered plans in seven states through the marketplaces in 2016. A company spokesperson told Fox Business in April that it was looking into expanding into “a few new geographies” for next year.  

Notably, the move comes days after the U.S. Department of Justice had filed antitrust lawsuits against Cigna’s proposed acquisition by Anthem and the proposed Aetna-Humana merger. Humana followed the news with its own announcement that it was dropping out of several ACA markets.

Fitting with the theme of conflicting expansions and contractions of different insurers’ 2017 ACA participation, on the same day Cigna announced it was moving into new markets, Centene announced in its latest earnings report that it will leave significantly reduce its marketplace presence in Arizona, offering coverage in only one county.

While Centene said its overall performance on the marketplaces is strong, its position is complicated by its March acquisition of HealthNet, which had suffered heavy losses on exchanges in California and Arizona.