A bipartisan Senate health panel is set to meet on Obamacare in September, but lawmakers disagree on funding for insurer payments that would otherwise lead to more exits from health insurance companies and higher premiums for people who don’t receive subsidies.
Members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee are holding hearings Sept. 6-7 to discuss how to keep premiums from rising much more than they are, particularly if the payments, called cost-sharing reduction subsidies, or CSRs, are not funded. If cut off, a Congressional Budget Office analysis found, premiums would rise by an average of 20 percent next year.
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Health insurer CareSource will offer Affordable Care Act exchange plans in Ohio’s Paulding County, leaving no place in the U.S. currently known to be at risk of lacking marketplace offerings under the law next year.
The decision by CareSource, a nonprofit that focuses largely on Medicaid, caps a triumph for state regulators around the country, who have fought hard to fill potential bare patches in their coverage maps after insurers announced pullbacks over the past several months amid uncertainty about the law’s future.
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