If a bipartisan compromise is to be reached on health reform, it must go beyond the immediate crisis and (relatively) simple fixes that get the most attention in Washington. Bipartisan discussion should focus on stabilizing the market in the short run, improving support for the middle class, striking a compromise on Medicaid expansion and reform, exploring alternatives the individual mandate, improving the ACA’s delivery system reform agenda, repealing the IPAB, and making Consumer-Directed Health Plans available to all individual insurance market enrollees.
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The second-lowest silver plan is one of the most popular plan choices on the marketplace and is also the benchmark that is used to determine the amount of financial assistance individuals and families receive. Based on preliminary 2018 rate filings, the second-lowest silver premium for a 40-year-old non-smoker will range from $244 in Detroit, MI to $631 in Wilmington, DE, before accounting for the tax credit that most enrollees in this market receive.
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The individual market shrank by 15% between March 2016 and March 2017, including a 25% decline among unsubsidized policyholders. The individual market is not “sound.” Because of rising premiums, millions of people who are not receiving subsidies can no longer afford to buy individual policies, and millions more may forfeit their policies in the next round of rate hikes.
Relinquishing at least some regulatory authority to the states might produce more functional markets where insurers can offer consumers the coverage they want at a price they can afford.
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A prominent and unlikely group of liberal and conservative health experts have authored an ambitious plan to fix the Affordable Care Act — and they plan to make a hard push for their ideas on Capitol Hill. The plan is notable because it has the support of especially well-connected health advisers on both sides of the aisle.
This new plan would aim to bring more stability to the Obamacare marketplaces by securing funding for key health law subsidies and ensuring strong enforcement of the individual mandate. In a nod to conservative priorities, it would also allow states more flexibility to pursue experimental waivers and higher contributions to tax-advantaged health savings accounts.
Signatories include: Joseph Antos, Stuart Butler, Lanhee Chen, John McDonough, Ron Pollack, Sara Rosenbaum, Grace-Marie Turner, Vikki Wachino, Gail Wilensky
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A major problem with the Affordable Care Act is the way it was passed: on a party-line vote, without support from a single Republican. This made the law vulnerable and created uncertainty about its future among market participants. The unsuccessful GOP repeal-and-replace efforts have been just as divisive. For a policy change of this magnitude to be lasting and stable, it should have at least some bipartisan support.
Universal coverage should be pursued in a way that is affordable, both to households and to the government, and that helps lower the trajectory of health-care costs overall. It should lead to higher-quality medical care, to make being insured attractive to households, and should encourage innovation, productivity and technological progress in the health-care sector. It should encourage young and healthy people to be covered in order to balance the risk pool facing insurers, making it attractive for insurers to offer insurance. It should ensure that even the hard-to-cover are insured.
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U.S. health insurer Anthem Inc said on Monday it will no longer offer Obamacare plans in Nevada’s state exchange and will stop offering the plans in nearly half of Georgia’s counties next year.
The moves come after Republican senators last month failed to repeal and replace Obamacare, former President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare reform law, creating uncertainty over how the program providing health benefits to 20 million Americans will be funded and managed in 2018.
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The GOP’s attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act has generated intense opposition and run into repeated roadblocks on Capitol Hill, despite advancing many worthy reforms. The proposals are right to allow individuals without pre-existing conditions to obtain insurance from a freely-competitive market, right to shift able-bodied individuals from Medicaid to the exchanges, and right to restructure Medicaid so that the largest share of its funds is not captured by the wealthiest states that need it least.
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The federal government owes health insurer Molina $52 million for payments it was supposed to receive involving losses under Obamacare, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims ruled Friday.
The payments, called “risk corridors,” were diminished as part of a spending bill advanced by Republicans, who referred to them as a “bailout” for the insurance industry. Withholding them contributed to losses for insurers and to the shutdown of nonprofit insurance co-ops created under the law.
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Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper and Ohio Governor John Kasich say the next step toward changing the Affordable Care Act – after lawmakers failed to follow through on health care reform – should now include a bipartisan effort. “Let’s get a bipartisan group of people together, and include some governors, who are the guys who have to- the people who have to implement these plans, and look at how do we stabilize private markets, how do we, you know, deal with these high-cost pools, and what’s the best way,” Democratic Gov. Hickenlooper said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday.
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Congressional Republicans plan to use the next four weeks away from Washington making a public case for a sweeping rewrite of the tax code, an ambitious legislative undertaking they hope will heal divisions that opened when the party’s signature health-care bill collapsed. But at home in their districts, they face pressures that could make it hard to focus on taxes.
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