CHANGING BACK TO WEB

Another firm is withdrawing from the individual health insurance market, including for Colorado, effective Jan. 1, 2027.

The move by Cigna Healthcare is part of the company’s overall plan to withdraw entirely from the Affordable Care Act market. It will impact individual health plans for 369,000 members in 11 states, according to a company announcement on April 30.

In Colorado, Cigna provides individual health insurance to 40,853 members, according to the the state’s insurance office.

Cigna joins five other insurers that have pulled out of Colorado since 2022. That doesn’t include two insurers that announced they were withdrawing from the individual market last year but rescinded that announcement two months later.

The withdrawals began with Oscar Health, which announced in May 2022 it would end its participation in the individual market in Arkansas and Colorado.

Then in October 2022, Bright Health announced it, too, was withdrawing its individual health insurance plans nationwide. Days later, Humana told its Colorado brokers and agents it was pulling out of the small group market in Colorado.

In July 2023, the Colorado Division of Insurance announced it was terminating the health plans for Friday Health and, along with several other states, petitioned the courts to liquidate the company. Most of the 30,000 Coloradans enrolled in Friday’s HMO were in the individual market.Rocky Mountain HMO and Anthem both announced their withdrawal from Colorado’s individual health insurance market in 2025 but rescinded their decision in October, two months after the Colorado General Assembly adopted legislation to spend $100 million to help reduce rising premiums in the individual market.

Also in 2025, Aetna, owned by CVS Health, withdrew from the small group market; it had stopped offering health insurance in the individual market in Colorado several years earlier, according to the Division of Insurance.

With Cigna leaving Colorado, that leaves six insurers covering the individual market: HMO Colorado (Anthem); Colorado Access, which will begin offering plans on the individual market for the first time in 2027; Denver Health Medical Plan’; Kaiser Foundation Health Plan; Rocky Mountain HMO; and Select Health.

Cigna is the largest plan to pull out of Colorado in the last four years, signaling instability in the individual market.

Mike Shinbein, an executive compensation consultant, wrote on LinkedIn in April that “this is exactly the kind of disruption that most employees never have to think about, because their employer handles it. For the self-employed, independent contractors, and gig workers who rely on the individual market, this is just life.”

It’s getting harder, Shinbein added.