Aetna’s Exchange Exit Will Hit Arizona, North Carolina, Utah Hardest

  • May 09, 2025

    CVS Health Corp.-owned Aetna plans to exit the Affordable Care Act exchange business in 2026, after projecting big financial losses from the segment this year. As the second-largest insurer in the ACA marketplace, Aetna’s withdrawal means almost 1.6 million enrollees will have to choose another insurer or become uninsured in 2026.

    Aetna offered exchange plans in 16 states in 2015, but it fully exited the exchanges in the 2018 plan year, citing financial losses. After CVS acquired Aetna for $78 billion in 2018, the insurer rejoined the ACA marketplace in 2022 and has since expanded its footprint to 16 states, and it is the second-largest ACA insurer as of the fourth quarter of 2024, according to data from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and AIS’s Directory of Health Plans (DHP).

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  • Jinghong Chen

    Jinghong has been producing infographics and data stories on employer-sponsored insurance, public health insurance programs and prescription drug coverage for AIS Health’s Health Plan Weekly and Radar on Drug Benefits since 2018. She also manages AIS Health’s annual executive compensation database for top insurers and Blue Cross and Blue Shield affiliates. Before joining AIS Health, she interned at WBEZ, Al Jazeera English and The New York Times Chinese. She graduated from Missouri School of Journalism with a focus on data journalism and international reporting.

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