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The Providence Health Plan said Wednesday that it would stop offering most of its insurance products by the year’s end, heralding the near-complete dissolution of a longtime stalwart of Oregon’s private health insurance marketplace.
“We have determined that the most responsible path forward is to exit most of our health insurance lines of business beginning in 2027,” Providence Health & Services CEO Eric Wexler said in a note to staff, which blamed the development on challenging market forces, state and federal regulations, and the rise of massive and hard-to-compete-with health insurance competitors.
Wexler emphasized that there would be no immediate change for those who get health benefits through the Providence Health Plan—a population which includes about 350,000 Oregonians.
“We will,” Wexler wrote, “continue to provide high-touch support and uninterrupted access to healthcare coverage through the end of 2026.”
He added that Providence hospitals and clinics will continue to be available through other insurance plans in 2027.
The announcement caps off a turbulent period for the decades-old health insurance company, which, as of a few months ago, employed 1,000-plus people, many of them in the Portland area where the health insurer is based.
The Providence Health Plan laid off numerous people in 2025. And, as WW reported early this year, its effort to outsource a major part of its operations to a Silicon Valley contractor immediately fell into disarray, disrupting the care for untold numbers of members, many of them Oregon public employees.
It was in this context that the insurer’s parent company, Providence Health & Services, said in March that it would put the Providence Health Plan up for sale.
Now, current and former employees tell WW, it appears the insurer is moving closer to shuttering altogether. Rather than simply putting its main operations under new management, it will in most cases just be winding them down entirely, while seeking to keep only certain relatively minor business appendages going through deals with other insurers.
Wexler said the PHP would be stepping away from essentially its entire commercial health insurance business. This constitute’s the plan’s main membership base, the people who get Providence benefits through, say, an employer or on Healthcare.gov.
Meanwhile, Wexler said, Providence is “committed to transferring the administration of our Medicaid program to another organization”—a move he expects to finalize later this year.
And in 2027, he wrote, the insurer would seek to keep operating its Medicare Advantage line “through a new agreement with a national carrier.” Medicare advantage memberships account for about 15% of all Providence Health Plan members, according to data the insurer shared with WW in March.
Of course, the insurance company’s network of providers was based in Providence’s much larger health care delivery network. “Our hospitals and clinics will continue to be available through other insurance plans,” Wexler wrote, “and we are working to be included in additional networks so patients have options to choose plans that include Providence.”
This is a developing story.
