Trump Ends CSR Payments Immediately
According to Modern Healthcare:
“In a brash move likely to roil insurance markets, President Donald Trump will ‘immediately’ halt payments to insurers under the Affordable Care Act.
Before sunrise Friday morning, Trump went on Twitter to urge Democrats to make a deal:
‘The Democrats ObamaCare is imploding, massive subsidy payments to their pet insurance companies has stopped. Dems should call me to fix!’
The Department of Health and Human Services had made the announcement in a statement late Thursday. ‘We will discontinue these payments immediately’ said acting HHS Secretary Eric Hargan and Medicare administrator Seema Verma. Sign-up season for subsidized private insurance starts Nov. 1, in less than three weeks, with about 9 million people currently covered.”
This could be devastating to those with incomes less than 250% of the Federal Poverty Limit. It is a direct attack on US citizens by a president who can not get his way politically and is meant to punish citizens and politicians alike for not following his dictates. Let me assure you, the ACA was not imploding and most of the cost issues with it were caused by Republicans such as former Alabama Senator Sessions and Michigan and Colorado Representatives Upton and Kingston tampering with the Risk Corridor Program.
However, what will happen is the differences will be picked up by increases in premium subsidies as I have said previously for those in this category of 138% to 250%. Indeed as the CBO has pointed out, it becomes cheaper in some cases to bump up to a Gold plan for some. See Tables 1 and 2. Net cost of the ACA increases by $31 billion over 10 years.
Trump asserted: “Obamacare is a broken mess. Piece by piece we will now begin the process of giving America the great HealthCare it deserves.”
The only thing broken today is the Presidency as it is occupied by a madman. One has to wonder if this is Trump’s last hurrah before indicted.
At this time, I have no polite words I can print on AB.
Dems should give a two word answer to old bone spurs. And they should make it public.
The best part of it is that Trump will tell his base that the ACA was failing and he did what he could in view of the GOP not following through to repeal it. Any counter narrative is “fake news” by the liberal media who should have its licenses pulled, just like the SOBs who protest during the playing of the national anthem should be fired. We live in a very Orwellian world and there is virtually no one in government who is putting the interests of the country and its citizens ahead of their self interests, the interests of their donors and the interests of their party.
The different state options for dealing with this are quite something.
Really separating the good insurance commissioners from the bad.
On the good end there is a plan where CSR non-receiver but premium subsidy receivers should be able to switch to gold plans for almost no cost and the feds eat the CSR cost through regular subsidies.
On the bad end premiums for every individual policy in the state go up quite a bit, and/or insurers take their ball and go home in the couple weeks before open enrollment.
And several options in the middle.
My state WA has a good insurance commissioner.
Jeffrey:
I have not really thought about the Gold Plan option. It could work; but as I have written in another post which came up just after this one, there are other things which will impact the ACA. Trump’s other Executive Order allows healthcare insurance companies to cherry pick the healthiest of the insured. And yes, > 400% FPL will be the most impacted by this.
Yes, the other order seems like more of a next year thing. The CSR change hits now.
Jeffrey:
Added a few remarks to the initial post. Found the CBO study on impact and what has come out of this is potentially cheaper insurance for some due to the increases in premium subsidies. Indeed if one examines CBO Tables 1 and 2, going to a Gold plan may be less costly than staying with a Silver Plan. Net Cost of this boondoggled by Trump is $31 billion over 10 years. No impact on those > 400% FPL.
Of course, had the Dems passed Medicare-for-all back in 2009 instead of letting Obama sabotage it, it would now be so popular that rolling it back would be political suicide. In addition health care costs would be far lower than they are now and the profit motive, which has no place in keeping people healthy, would have been completely removed.
Well then why weren’t you in the sense doing that?
Jeffrey:
Who are you talking to?
KK,
Science fiction is not the purpose of this blog.