EDITORIAL: Trump’s Obamacare recklessness will wreak havoc
And he won't make his intentions clear, leaving health insurers in a state of uncertainty at a time when they have to finalize rates for next year's insurance offerings.
There is at least one certainty, though: If Trump follows through with one of his pledges to interfere with the Affordable Care Act's workings, he would unnecessarily turn the individual health insurance market on its head.
A new report from the nonpartisan
What Trump has in mind is stopping monthly payments the federal government makes to health insurers known as cost-sharing reduction payments. Those payments reimburse health insurance companies for minimizing out-of-pocket costs, such as copayments and deductibles, for their lowest-income customers who purchase insurance through the health insurance marketplaces the Affordable Care Act created.
Those marketplaces serve the individual health insurance market -- which is where people buy insurance when they don't receive it through work or through another government program. Most people who purchase insurance through the marketplace qualify for tax credits that reduce the cost of their monthly premiums. The lowest-income consumers who buy marketplace insurance receive help from both those tax credits and the cost-sharing reduction payments.
But if the Trump administration cuts off the cost-sharing reduction payments, health insurance companies would have to make up for the loss. They would do that, the
Premiums on the mid-grade silver plans offered through the health insurance marketplaces would be 20 percent higher next year than they would be otherwise, it projected, and 25 percent higher in 2020 than they would be otherwise.
The portion of the
The budget office points out that the federal government would largely be on the hook for health insurance premium increases the Trump administration would bring on by stopping the cost-sharing reduction payments. Budget deficits would be
The budget office also projects that 1 million more people would lack insurance next year than if the Trump administration simply allowed cost-sharing reduction payments to continue.
The administration has been making the cost-sharing reduction payments month by month since it took office in January. On Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times reported that the administration had decided to make another month's worth of those payments.
But the president won't commit to continuing those payments. The lack of long-term certainty, which the Trump administration could eliminate simply by committing to enforce the Affordable Care Act as written, is what is roiling the health insurance market.
Markets need regulatory certainty in order to stabilize. When it comes to health insurance, Trump is providing the exact opposite.
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