Va. lawmakers work to ensure health insurance access in rural areas

Sept. 09--WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Southwest Virginia's representatives in Congress are currently working to make sure that people in rural areas will have access to affordable health care insurance as insurance companies announce that they do not plan to participate in Obamacare.

U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., recently made a statement regarding insurer Optima Health's decision not to participate in the Obamacare individual insurance exchange in the markets of the Ninth Congressional District. The district includes Tazewell, Buchanan, Bland and Wythe counties in Southwest Virginia.

"This news does not yet mean that Ninth District residents will not have any options for individual insurance on the exchange," Griffith said Friday. "I have been in conversations with state officials. They are continuing work to bring in an insurer to cover the 'bare' counties. Likewise, I have made it clear that I am willing to work to resolve the issues surrounding Cost Sharing Reduction (CSR) subsidies, which have been a concern to many insurers. It is my hope that before the deadline at the end of this month, an insurance company will step forward."

"This is the collapse of Obamacare I have spoken of for years. Obamacare was built much like a house of cards, and we are now seeing its fall," Griffith said. "The House of Representatives bill to repeal and replace Obamacare would have stabilized the individual insurance market, but because the Senate has failed to do anything, I believe we must fund Cost Sharing Reduction (CSR) subsidies, even though these subsidies were not lawfully funded under the last Administration. This step will help stabilize markets and encourage insurers to remain in the market."

Griffith explained how the bill would have improved the insurance market by giving companies a more stable and certain business environment.

"The House bill to repeal and replace Obamacare would have stabilized the insurance market by letting insurance companies know what they were dealing with; in other words, it would have eliminated the confusion and concern we now see as Obamacare slowly collapses," Griffith told the Bluefield Daily Telegraph. "Insurers would have had a plan that would work. The bill was designed to bring down the cost of insurance for average families, which likewise would have provided stability. Lower costs would lead to more people participating in the insurance market, and higher participation would mean a more stable market. The bill also included a $138 billion patient and state stability fund that would have given states resources to promote insurance affordability and choice and helped consumers with healthcare costs."

Griffith said he would continue to do everything he could to ensure that all Americans can get health insurance.

"I am ready to work across the aisle in Washington, DC, and with the governor and Legislature of Virginia to achieve this goal," he stated.

During a hearing Thursday of the U.S. Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee , U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. raised concerns about the painful effects of health care uncertainty on rural communities in Virginia, following news that Optima will reduce its insurance offerings in Virginia after months of mixed messages and destabilizing actions from the Trump Administration, according to a press release from his office.

Kaine said that while he was addressing his committee colleagues and a group of governors, he cautioned against these health care disparities that hurt rural communities and called on the bipartisan group of leaders to grapple with this issue to fix the growing divide between rural, suburban, and urban America.

"The Optima decision, the Anthem decision, is going to hit rural Virginia the hardest," Kaine stated. "Virginia did not expand Medicaid, that has hit rural Virginia the hardest, and I think one of the issues we have to grapple with, and many of your states are facing this too, is we don't want to become two nations separated between rural America and the rest of the country."

Kaine and U.S. Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., have introduced a reinsurance bill to stabilize the individual market and lower premiums. Kaine said in a press release Thursday that the bipartisan group of governors agree that reinsurance can be helpful to "send a signal of stability to insurers that there will be a backstop against high cost claims, keeping them in the market." A lack of insurance options is a problem that has hurt families in rural areas of the country, including in Virginia.

"You've done a very good job, each of you, as you've collectively described the benefits of reinsurance," Kaine said. "You can lower premiums, by (lowering) premiums you can bring in more young healthy people, and other people who just find affordability more attractive obviously. By lowering premiums you reduce the advance premium tax credit, the subsidy (CSR payments) on the federal budget. You can protect high risk people and you can also send a signal of stability to insurers that there will be a backstop against high cost claims, keeping them in the market. The strategies that we're talking about here and that have been validated by, yesterday and today, two groups of bipartisan leaders at the state level are anything but 'a bailout' for anyone, they're really designed to help people and to provide at least some temporary stability with a predictability that will enable us to find bigger picture items."

The committee will again meet next week for two additional bipartisan hearings on health care improvements. HELP Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander said Sept. 6 that he hopes to have agreement on legislative options for the Senate soon.

-- Contact Greg Jordan at [email protected]

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