One of the nation’s biggest health insurers says it will not return to Ohio’s public insurance exchanges next year, a decision that could open more holes in the Affordable Care Act’s increasingly thin system for helping people buy coverage.
The move announced Tuesday by Anthem could leave shoppers in 20 counties without an option for buying individual coverage on the exchange unless another insurer steps in.
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For Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, writing a Republican-only health care bill that can pass the Senate boils down to this question: How do you solve a problem like Dean, Lisa, Patrick, Ted, Rand and Susan?
Those are some GOP senators whose clashing demands McConnell, R-Ky., must resolve. Facing solid Democratic opposition to demolishing former President Barack Obama’s 2010 overhaul, Republicans will lose if just three of their 52 senators defect.
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GOP senators say they’re discussing a possible short-term bill if their health care talks drag on. It might include money to help stabilize shaky insurance markets with subsidies to reduce out-of-pocket costs for low-earning people and letting states offer less expensive policies. It’s unclear Democrats would offer their needed cooperation, but Republicans are talking about it. “We’ve discussed quite a bit the possibility of a two-step process,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. “In 2018 and ’19, we’d basically be a rescue team to make sure people can buy insurance.”
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A pair of moderate Republicans who’d been holdouts against the GOP health care bill said Wednesday they were now backing the high-profile legislation after winning President Donald Trump’s support for their proposal for reviving the languishing measure.
The conversions of Reps. Fred Upton, R-Mich., and Billy Long, R-Mo., could breathe new life into the sagging Republican push to deliver their long-standing promise repeal former President Obama’s health care overhaul. Upton and others said they believed the House could pass the legislation Thursday.
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President Trump’s pick to run Medicare and Medicaid won confirmation Monday from a divided Senate as lawmakers braced for another epic battle over the government’s role in health care and society’s responsibility toward the vulnerable.
Indiana health care consultant Seema Verma, a protégé of Vice President Pence, was approved by a 55-43 vote, largely along party lines. She’ll head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a $1 trillion agency that oversees health insurance programs for more than 130 million people, from elderly nursing home residents to newborns. It’s part of the Department of Health and Human Services.
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The Affordable Care Act’s insurance exchanges have become too risky for major health insurers, and that’s creating further doubt about coverage options consumers might have next year.
Anthem CEO Joseph Swedish said Wednesday his company is waiting to see whether the government makes some short-term fixes to the shaky exchanges before it decides how much it will participate next year. The Blue Cross-Blue Shield carrier is the nation’s second largest insurer and sells coverage on exchanges in 14 states.
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The House voted Friday on the measure that passed the Senate, part of a process that will make it easier for a subsequent Obamacare repeal bill to advance through the Senate with a simple majority vote and without the threat of a Democratic filibuster. The budget resolution is a crucial first step for Republicans controlling Congress to keep their longstanding promise to repeal the law, which is saddled with problems such as rapidly rising premiums.
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Growing numbers of Republicans showed discomfort Monday over obliterating President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul without having a replacement to show voters. Hoping to capitalize on the jitters, Democrats staged a late-night Senate talk-a-thon to condemn the GOP push.
With Donald Trump just 12 days from entering the White House, Republicans have positioned a repeal and replacement of Obama’s 2010 health care statute atop their congressional agenda. But GOP lawmakers have never been able to rally behind an alternative, and Republican senators are increasingly voicing reluctance to vote to yank health coverage from millions of people without a substitute.
That hesitancy was fed as Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., among those who want to delay repeal until a substitute is ready, said Mr. Trump telephoned him Friday night and expressed support for doing both together.
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In crafting an Obamacare replacement, Donald Trump and Republican congressional leaders will have to unite on complicated changes affecting the financial and physical well-being of millions of people. Republicans have “a really narrow path,” says Grace-Marie Turner. “They’ve got to deal with the politics of this, they’ve got to make sure they come up with good policy, and they also have to process challenges.” House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX) says of the challenge, “Unlike Obamacare, which ripped up the individual market, this will be done deliberately, in an appropriate timetable.”
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Next year, taxpayers will fork over nearly $10 billion more to cover double-digit premium hikes for subsidized health insurance under the ACA, according to a study from the Center for Health and Economy. The study estimates that the cost of premium subsidies under the ACA will rise from $32.8 billion currently to $42.6 billion. Under current law, “you get a premium increase, you pour more money in,” said economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin, founder of the Center for Health and Economy. “The concern is that will feed more premium increases.” If the health care law is repealed next year, it is still yet to be seen what the remaining carriers participating in the ACA exchanges will do in 2018. It is also unclear how supportive Congress will be for subsidies going into a system slated to disappear.
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