Alaska draws major federal funding to shore up individual health insurance market
The
The waiver program draws its name from Section 1332 of the Affordable Care Act, which allows states to apply for an "innovation waiver" when they try new strategies aimed at offering high-quality and affordable health insurance. The waivers became available to states on
With the federal government's
"We're still concerned for
Prices for individual plans in
The federal money cuts an expected price jump for 2017 to 7 percent from the previously expected 42 percent.
Murkowski also pointed to the state Legislature as deserving credit for the program.
"Trying to gain consensus to find
Now, the federal government will act as a "backstop ... so they don't have to come up with another
The waiver "will temporarily stabilize
It's "not a long-term solution but it does temporarily stabilize
Verma called
But the plan has its limits. The "innovation" of
Murkowski said the question of the program's sustainability was "a fair one."
The waiver is not "designed to be a funding source in perpetuity," she said.
Instead, it's meant to stop the bleeding while policymakers figure out a way forward.
"The hope is that you don't need to have this backstop going well out into the future, that as a state, as we work to reduce our health care costs," eventually, "we won't be in the same really dire situation that we are right now, where our costs are off of everybody's charts, our insurance is down to one," Murkowski said. "My hope would be that we wouldn't need that in the long, long term. But for the short term, we absolutely do."
Verma said the waiver would keep costs down as the state implements the reinsurance plan between 2018 and 2022.
The reinsurance plan works this way: The state collected
The program covers claims in the individual market for people with one of 33 high-cost conditions, so that costs can remain stable for others in the program.
The state projected that the reinsurance plan would cut premiums by 20 percent next year, by extension making coverage available for more people.
Since the start of the Trump administration this year, it had been widely expected that the waiver would be granted -- a plan telegraphed to the public by Health and Human Services Secretary
But before that, some questioned whether
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