Blue Shield Leads Exchange Numbers

For the first time in three years, Blue Shield of California leads enrollment in the state’s insurance exchange while Oscar, a closely watched newcomer, experienced a slow start.

The Covered California exchange said it won’t release enrollment figures by company until later this month, and insurers declined to share specifics until then. But interviews with industry officials indicate some insurers, such as Blue Shield and Molina Healthcare Inc., picked up more business while others lost ground.

Until now, Anthem Blue Cross had led Obamacare enrollment in California with 30% share of the market. But now rival Blue Shield has jumped ahead.

“Our competitive position did improve,” said Ken Wood, senior vice president of consumer markets at San Francisco-based Blue Shield. “A better price position meant better retention and more new enrollment.”

A spokesperson for Anthem declined to discuss the company’s California results ahead of the exchange’s announcement. But last month, the company said its Obamacare enrollment in California and 13 other states was 30% lower than expected and rivals’ lower rates were one reason. 

“We aren’t experiencing the overall market growth on the public exchanges that we projected when we laid out our five-year plan,” Anthem Chief Executive Joseph Swedish said during a Jan. 27 conference call with analysts and investors.

Last week, Covered California said about 425,000 new enrollees had picked out coverage but more last-minute applicants were being counted. Nearly 1.2 million consumers had renewed their policies.

The California exchange added two new insurers for this year — Oscar and UnitedHealth Group Inc. — but neither garnered much enrollment, according to sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Both Oscar and UnitedHealth are only selling policies in a limited number of regions and each insurer had less than 1,000 enrollees by early January.

This story was produced by Kaiser Health News, which publishes California Healthline, a service of the California Health Care Foundation.