Health insurers around the nation are responding rapidly to the potentially cost-increasing elements of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
One response: narrow networks, in which plan members have fewer choices of physicians if they want the benefits of remaining in their network. Now, the University of Pennsylvania has taken a close look at the narrow network trend and has reported back that Georgians in general find themselves in the narrowest networks of all 50 states. A dozen states had no narrow networks, by the definition created by the researchers. For states that had narrow networks, the lowest percentages were found in Idaho and North Carolina.
The study was done by the university's Leonard Davis Institute, with funding by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Researchers studied silver plans representing 394 unique provider networks offered by 267 issuers.
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The 10 states with the narrowest networks were:
10. Massachusetts
60 percent of plans have narrow networks
9. Ohio
60 percent of plans have narrow networks
Photo: Boston
8. Nebraska
63 percent of plans have narrow networks
7. New Jersey
67 percent of plans have narrow networks
Photo: Nebraska
6. Texas
73 percent of plans have narrow networks
5. Arizona
73 percent of plans have narrow networks
Photo: The Alamo in San Antonio, Texas
4. California
75 percent of plans have narrow networks
3. Oklahoma
78 percent of plans have narrow networks
Photo: San Francisco
2. Florida
79 percent of plans have narrow networks
1. Georgia
83 percent of plans have narrow networks
Photo: Florida
The states with no narrow networks included Wyoming, West Virginia, South Dakota, Rhode Island, Oregon, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Missouri, Delaware, Connecticut, Arkansas and Alabama.
"Now that insurers can no longer discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions and must cover a wide range of services, … plans are using narrow networks to keep premium costs down and remain competitive as consumers shop for coverage," the report said. The authors noted that, in general, consumers aren't given sufficient information on a network's size to make the best choices.
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Dan Cook
Dan Cook is a journalist and communications consultant based in Portland, OR. During his journalism career he has been a reporter and editor for a variety of media companies, including American Lawyer Media, BusinessWeek, Newhouse Newspapers, Knight-Ridder, Time Inc., and Reuters. He specializes in health care and insurance related coverage for BenefitsPRO.
