It keeps getting harder to sell Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) policies, says Steven Mendelsohn, a Montgomery County licensed insurance salesman.
It's bad enough that United Healthcare pulled out of the Pennsylvania exchange that sells the subsidized health insurance parties last year, when rates went up 10%. Or that Aetna -- which less than 10 years ago dominated the local market for individual policies -- stopped writing the policies here earlier this year, when rates went up another 10%.
Now the last group that offers Obamacare policies on the Pennsylvania health insurance exchange, Independence Blue Cross (IBX), is boosting next year's rates 29%, in the face of rising claims, costs and lossses -- and cutting out the middleman, the agents who help most Obamacare buyers arrange and monitor their policies, Mendelsohn says.
