ACA exchange plans need major changes, Aetna's Bertolini says

Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini said Wednesday that so far the Obamacare insurance exchanges have signed up only a small percentage of Americans who previously were uninsured, and that shows the program needs major changes.

Speaking in an CNBC interview from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Bertolini said recent indications are that only 11% of the people signing up were uninsured and that most of the exchange plan enrollees are those who shifted from the previous individual insurance market to receive a premium subsidy.

For Obamacare to work better, he said, it needs to be simpler and offer consumers a broader choice of insurance plans. “When you get more choice, you make it more of a market and you get more people in the program,” he said.

Bertolini raised concerns about whether insurers would “get beat up” if they propose double-digit rate increases when they submit their 2015 exchange plan rates in mid-May.

Other experts say that whether 2015 rates go up significantly depends on the percentage of younger and healthier people who sign up for exchange plans during the 2014 open-enrollment period that ends March 31. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation analysis concluded that even if only 25% of the new enrollees are in the younger cohort, 2015 premiums wouldn't necessarily rise more than a couple of percentage points.

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