Most people live in areas without a competitive market for health insurance. Four out of five metro areas in the U.S. are virtual monopolies for individual health insurers. That’s the takeaway from a new study by the American Medical Association.
The AMA’s findings include:
- 83% of metropolitan markets were “highly concentrated,” based on the newly revised Horizontal Merger Guidelines issued last year by the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission
- In about half of metropolitan markets, at least one health insurer had a commercial market share of 50% or more, and
- In half of the states reviewed in the study, the two largest health insurers had a combined commercial market share of 70% or more.
The 10 states with the least competitive commercial health insurance markets, are:
- Alabama
- Alaska
- Delaware
- Michigan
- Hawaii
- District of Columbia
- Nebraska
- North Carolina
- Indiana
- Maine.
The 2011 edition of the study, Competition in Health Insurance: A Comprehensive Study of U.S. Markets, reports commercial health insurance market shares and federal concentration measures for 368 metropolitan markets and 48 states.
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