16 August, 2017
By ending the payments the federal government would be required to pay larger tax credits to consumers to help offset the premium costs. In other insurance news, a Colorado group is asking state officials to restrain premium increases, and Reuters reports that some investors are turning cool on insurance stocks. In a letter, leaders of the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative urged state Commissioner of Insurance Marguerite Salazar to push insurers to accept lower premium increases in the individual market, where people buy health insurance on their own.
"Try to wriggle out of his responsibilities as he might, the C.B.O. report makes clear that if President Trump refuses to make these payments, he will be responsible for American families paying more for less care", New York Senator Chuck Schumer said.
"The CBO analysis makes clear that ending cost-sharing subsidies would be a ideal example of cutting off your nose to spite your face", says Larry Levitt, a vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Maintaining the subsidies will become an urgent matter in September, when insurers have to sign contracts with the ACA exchanges.
"In the agencies' estimation, under the policy, about 5% of people live in areas that would have no insurers in the nongroup market in 2018", the budget office said.
Timothy Jost, a professor emeritus of health care law at Washington and Lee University School of Law, says that picture may be a bit too rosy.
The CBO anticipates premiums for the baseline silver insurance plan would jump 20 percent by 2018. But that may not happen, Jost warns.
About 27,000 DE residents have private insurance through the state's health care exchange. "The Trump Administration should thus eliminate the uncertainty and pledge to continue the payments on a permanent basis".
The cost-sharing payments have been at the center of a political battle over the Affordable Care Act since before Trump took office. In 2014, House Republicans filed a lawsuit claiming that the Obama Administration had enacted the subsidies illegally because Congress had never appropriated the necessary funds.
In the wake of those failures, Trump said he might remove the subsidies, forcing Obamacare to "implode", and giving Democrats no choice but to negotiate some form of replacement.
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