Trump's Latest Obamacare Attack Triggers Rate Hikes, Lawsuits, Confusion
By ALICE OLLSTEIN Published OCTOBER 17, 2017 6:00 AM
President Donald Trump’s decision last week to pull the trigger on his oft-repeated threat to cut off subsidies to health insurance companies is having widespread fallout, with many states scrambling to approve higher insurance rates for 2018 to make up for the loss and keep insurers from fleeing the market altogether.
Because the insurance companies are required by law to cover everyone regardless of their health status and lower the cost of care for low-income patients, and because many had assumed the government would keep making the cost sharing reduction (CSR) payments, Trump’s move has thrown them into turmoil.
The vast majority either had raised their rates already in anticipation of the CSR cut or are filing for emergency rate hikes now. And while these rate hikes will not impact the more than 80 percent of individual market enrollees who get government tax credits, they will cost the government billions of dollars as those tax credits creep upward to cover the difference. The rate increases will also slam the millions of middle class Americans whose individual health plans are unsubsidized.
The timing of the announcement—mere weeks before the start of open enrollment period for 2018 and just after insurers had already signed contracts for participating —could not have been worse.
“Potentially the biggest effect of all this is just to create confusion,” warned Larry Levitt, the vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation. “It would be quite understandable if consumers are perplexed about whether subsidies are still available for them, which they are.”
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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/csr-fallout-trump-obamacare-aca-csrs
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amirite?
