The Trump administration announced late Thursday that it would stop paying subsidies to insurers that help cover the cost for about 6 million low-income customers on the Obamacare exchanges. The Department of Health and Human Services said that the cost sharing reduction (CSR) payments “will be discontinued immediately.”
Although eliminating the payments will save several billion dollars in the short run – the payments cost roughly $7 billion in 2017 and were set to rise to $10 billion in 2018 – the federal government will end up spending more on Obamacare subsidies due to the higher cost of health insurance. A CBO analysis from August found that terminating the payments “would increase the federal deficit, on net, by $194 billion from 2017 through 2026.”
Here’s what the controversial decision means:
Trump is clearly looking to destroy Obamacare: Combined with Trump’s executive order Thursday undercutting Affordable Care Act markets, this move represents taking a sledgehammer or a chainsaw to Obama’s signature law. “President Trump left little doubt yesterday that he intends to do as much damage as he can to the Affordable Care Act’s insurance markets,” Axios’s Sam Baker writes. “And he can do a lot.”
Many Americans, and insurers, will be hurt: Insurers have locked in their rates for 2018, but some may try to secure increases or decide to pull out of some markets. “This action will make it harder for patients to access the care they need. Costs will go up and choices will be restricted,” the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association and the health insurance trade association said in a joint statement. If premiums do jump as expected, low-income enrollees who get federal subsidies to cover the cost of their plans won’t feel the pinch, but millions of Americans who earn too much to qualify for the subsidies will face sharply higher costs.
It’s hard to find any winners here: “Trump’s new policy will increase premiums by 20%, cost the government $194 billion, increase the deficit, destabilize insurance markets, and increase the number of uninsured Americans,” Vox’s Ezra Klein tweeted. “There is nothing it makes better; it’s pure policy nihilism.”
Though some call it a win for the Constitution: The administration justified its move by citing a Justice Department decision that the payments were illegal without Congressional appropriation, a question at the heart of a lawsuit by House Republicans. “Today’s decision … preserves a monumental affirmation of Congress’s authority and the separation of powers,” the House Speaker Paul Ryan said in a statement late Thursday.
Not every Republican is pleased: “Cutting health care subsidies will mean more uninsured in my district. @potus promised more access, affordable coverage. This does opposite.” – Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) tweeted. And Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval said, “It’s going to hurt people. It’s going to hurt kids. It’s going to hurt families. It’s going to hurt individuals. It’s going to hurt people with mental health issues. It’s going to hurt veterans. It’s going to hurt everybody.”
And Democrats want to make sure Trump owns health care now – and “will pay the price for it”: “Sadly, instead of working to lower health costs for Americans, it seems President Trump will single-handedly hike Americans’ health premiums. It is a spiteful act of vast, pointless sabotage leveled at working families and the middle class in every corner of America,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said in a joint statement. “Now, millions of hard-working American families will suffer just because President Trump wants them to.”
Lawsuits are already in the works: “A coalition of U.S. states lined up on Friday to sue” to prevent the subsidy cuts, Reuters reports. Democratic attorneys general in New York and California are joining with other states, including Kentucky, Massachusetts and Connecticut, to file suit in federal court in California. Insurers, who are required by Obamacare to reduce out-of-pocket costs for low-income enrollees, could also sue to get the compensation the law promises in return.
The pressure will be on Congress to step in: “President Trump is once again the bull in the china shop, telling Congress, ‘I broke it, you buy it,’” ABC News says. Congress can have the subsidies resume by appropriating money for them, and Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Patty Murray (D-WA) are negotiating an Obamacare fix that would include that, but they reportedly still have a long way to go to reach an agreement.
And Trump may still be open to a deal: “I will say the Democrats should come to me, I would even go to them,” Trump said Friday. “I’m only interested in one thing: getting great health care for this country.” But Mick Mulvaney, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said Friday that Trump would oppose a compromise along the lines of the one being negotiated. The question then is what else Trump might want in return.
Two new decisions would lead to higher health costs for older and sicker Americans.
A new executive order and a subsequent announcement on health care subsidies will shake up the insurance market.
President Trump has delivered a one-two punch to the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Late Thursday he announced the elimination of the subsidy payments to insurers that help lower-income Americans afford health care. That move came just hours after he signed an executive order that he says will promote more competition in the health insurance market.
The payments to insurers help fund subsidies that assist lower-income Americans in paying for deductibles, copays and other out-of-pocket health care expenses. The president had been threatening to cut off the subsidy payments for months.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office had earlier estimated that if subsidy payments were withheld, premiums for individuals who buy the most popular health plans on the ACA health insurance marketplace would soar by 20 percent next year and 25 percent by 2020.
The president’s moves come just two weeks before the start of marketplace open enrollment. Insurers had threatened to abandon the marketplace if the subsidies were cut off. Some states have already signaled plans to challenge that action in court.
Congress has tried repeatedly over the past few months to repeal and replace the ACA. Thursday’s announcements are part of the president’s latest strategy to continue those attempts in the absence of congressional action. AARP has strongly opposed any repeal of the health care law.
The executive order directs the secretary of labor to consider expanding the ability of small businesses to form so-called association health plans. These plans may be able to avoid many state and federal insurance regulations. They could, for example, be exempt from the ACA rules that protect older Americans and people with preexisting health conditions from being charged far higher premiums as well as the ACA requirement to provide essential health benefits — such as emergency room care and mental health services.
The impact of these changes would potentially sting millions of older and sicker Americans. That’s because the new insurance options would likely attract low-risk individuals — who are generally healthier — leaving older, sicker people in the current individual market. Since those plans would be so heavily weighted with sick people, policyholders would pay significantly higher premiums.
“The order aims to create loosely regulated insurance plans that could provide skimpier benefits and cheaper premiums to young and healthy people, but that would make coverage more expensive for older people and those with preexisting conditions,” said Larry Levitt, senior vice president for special initiatives at the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. “However, there are still a lot of unanswered questions about how this would all work and how much legal authority the administration really has.”
The order also paves the way for broader use of short-term policies that are not required to include essential health benefits nor cover people with preexisting medical conditions. Such short-term plans often serve as a bridge for people between jobs. Under the previous administration, individuals could buy the plans for only three months. The order would expand their duration to nearly a year.
And the president is asking the secretaries of labor, treasury, and health and human services to allow more businesses to use health reimbursement arrangements. Under the arrangements, businesses could use pretax dollars to reimburse employees for out-of-pocket medical costs and premiums.
Insurance premiums already are in place for 2018, and most insurers had anticipated the loss of the subsidy payments and set rates considerably higher to take that into account. Those that haven’t may ask state insurance commissioners to allow them to increase premiums.
President Donald Trump’s plan to make it easier for small businesses to band together and buy stripped-down health insurance plans could violate a federal law governing employee benefit plans and will almost certainly be challenged in court, legal experts said.
Trump signed an executive order on Thursday aimed at letting small businesses join nationwide associations for the purpose of buying large-group health plans that are not subject to coverage requirements of the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.
Industry experts said Trump’s order could ultimately enable such associations to purchase insurance from states with the fewest regulations. That would undermine Obamacare, former Democratic President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law, which Republicans have failed to repeal.
Several healthcare and employment law experts said if Trump’s plan moves forward, states could argue the federal government had overstepped its authority in violation of the U.S. Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), a law that governs large-group plans.
In Thursday’s order, Trump asked the Department of Labor to propose rules that would allow more employers to participate in association health plans. Legal experts said lawsuits might not be brought until such regulations are issued.
Dania Palanker, an assistant research professor at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms, said ERISA granted states the right to regulate association health plans.
Attorneys general could argue the federal government had overreached if the Trump administration winds up allowing associations to buy health coverage across borders that only complies with a single state’s regulations.
”Any attempt to allow the sale of association plans to small groups across state lines will be open to legal scrutiny as to whether it is violating ERISA and undermining state authority,” said Palanker.
‘PREPARED TO FIGHT’
A White House official said that “departments will be drafting rules in a way that minimizes litigation risk.”
The Department of Labor “will be reviewing ERISA in the course of following the President’s direction” in the order, the official said.
A number of state attorneys general from Democratic-leaning states said on Thursday they would fight any efforts to weaken Obamacare, which extended health insurance to 20 million Americans, but which Republicans call intrusive and ineffective.
“It should come as no surprise that California is prepared to fight in court to protect affordable healthcare for its people,” said Xavier Becerra, the state’s Democratic attorney general.
Legal experts said states may argue the associations formed for the purpose of buying insurance are not employers under ERISA.
Although ERISA allows associations to qualify as employers and manage large-group plans, federal regulators have generally required that members of such associations have a high degree of common interest beyond buying insurance, said Allison Hoffman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law.
Trump’s order asks the secretary of labor, who enforces ERISA, to consider expanding the common-interest requirements to permit broader participation in association health plans.
SHORT-TERM PLANS
The idea of expanding association health plans across state lines has long been championed by Republican U.S. Senator Rand Paul, who made it a key plank of his own proposal to repeal and replace Obamacare. The Kentucky Republican was at Trump’s side when the president signed the executive order.
Paul’s proposal said ERISA was too restrictive in its definition of associations and that the law needed to be amended.
Thursday’s order also asked the Labor, Treasury and Health and Human Services Departments to look into expanding participation in cheaper, bare-bones, short-term limited-duration insurance plans, which are not subject to the ACA.
Timothy Jost, a professor at the Washington and Lee University School of Law, said such a move would face fewer legal hurdles than the expansion of association health plans.
The current three-month limitation on the use of such plans was a rule adopted by the Obama administration last year, so the Trump administration could roll it back through the normal rulemaking process.
Such plans are typically marketed to individuals who are between jobs or have a gap in coverage. They are much cheaper than ACA plans, but cover less and can exclude those with pre-existing conditions.
The only question is how much it will weaken the ACA and hurt insurers.
The messy saga of the Affordable Care Act just got even messier.
President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order aiming to make it easier for Americans to buy skimpier and cheaper health insurance. The order isn’t as aggressive as it might have been in undermining the ACA, but that’s scant reassurance for insurers, who face an administration that seems actively hostile to a law it’s supposed to enforce.
The order aims to let association health plans — groups of small employers banding together to buy insurance — offer coverage throughout the U.S. Insurers consistently oppose selling health insurance across state lines because of varying regulations. If plans are permitted to cross state borders, then insurers fear a regulatory race to the bottom, where cheaper and less-comprehensive plans from states with lax rules would attract the healthiest patients, leaving insurers in more-regulated states with a sick and expensive group of enrollees.
Insurers like Anthem inc. have pruned back their participation in the ACA to states where they feel safe. This order could shake up even those stable markets where the ACA is doing relatively well.
Allowing insurance sales across state lines may not make much of a difference. Insurance plans need a network of health-care providers in places wherever they offer insurance, and that’s difficult to create from scratch in a new state. But anything that makes state markets less predictable is a negative for insurers.
Trump’s order has the potential to siphon young and healthy patients from the ACA’s individual insurance markets to less-regulated plans and to raise premiums for sicker Americans, even if everyone stays within state borders. It instructs federal agencies to work to expand access to cheaper insurance that skirts the ACA’s regulations, both through association plans as well as skimpy, short-term insurance plans. Tennessee, where people can already sign up for cheaper association plans, has one of the sickest ACA marketplace populations.
A number of questions remain. An outline of the order suggests access to looser association plans may be limited to employers. But if self-employed individuals can sign up — an option the administration says it’s still considering — then it will be far more damaging to the individual market.
It’s also unclear whether people who purchase cheap, short-term insurance will be able to skirt the ACA’s individual mandate. If they can, then those plans will likely be substantially more popular. And it’s unclear how much power states will have to regulate such plans.
But even in mild form, these efforts will damage an already fragile market over time. And the uncertainty about these questions will have insurers running scared for the foreseeable future as agencies work on rules. Little about this administration suggests it will push for options that will make the ACA more functional.
President Trump will end key payments to insurers selling ObamaCare plans, the White House announced late Thursday, marking Trump’s most aggressive move yet to dismantle the law after multiple GOP efforts to repeal and replace it failed this year.
The Trump administration has continued making the the disbursements to insurers, known as cost-sharing reduction payments, on a monthly basis. But Trump had consistently threatened to end the payments, which are worth an estimated $7 billion this year.
“Based on guidance from the Department of Justice, the Department of Health and Human Services has concluded that there is no appropriation for cost-sharing reduction payments to insurance companies under Obamacare. In light of this analysis, the Government cannot lawfully make the cost-sharing reduction payments,” the White House said in a statement late Thursday night.
The payments were created as part of the Affordable Care Act but were then the subject of a lawsuit by House Republicans during the Obama administration. A federal court ruled the payments were being made illegally, but the Obama administration appealed.
Congress could still decide to appropriate the payments, and there is bipartisan agreement that they should be made. But no action has been taken, and some Republicans are hesitant to vote for what they see as a bailout of ObamaCare.
“The bailout of insurance companies through these unlawful payments is yet another example of how the previous administration abused taxpayer dollars and skirted the law to prop up a broken system. Congress needs to repeal and replace the disastrous Obamacare law and provide real relief to the American people,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.
The administration’s decision is likely to lead to lawsuits. It also puts enormous pressure on lawmakers to reach a deal on funding the payments, adding yet another partisan battle to an already full calendar.
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) issued a joint statement calling the decision a “spiteful act of vast, pointless sabotage … now, millions of hard-working American families will suffer just because President Trump wants them to.”
Meanwhile, Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) praised the decision to end the Obama administration’s appeal of the subsidies.
“Today’s decision … preserves a monumental affirmation of Congress’s authority and the separation of powers,” Ryan said in a statement. “Obamacare has proven itself to be a fatally flawed law, and the House will continue to work with the Trump administration to provide the American people a better system.”
Cutting off the subsidies could throw the ObamaCare marketplace into chaos.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said in August that about 1 million additional people would be uninsured in 2018 and insurance companies would raise premium prices by about 20 percent for ObamaCare plans if the payments were cut off.
The CBO also said halting the payments would increase the federal deficit by $194 billion through 2026, largely because federal assistance to buy ObamaCare plans rises when premiums do.
The payments help low-income people afford co-pays, deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs associated with health insurance policies. Insurers have called the payments critical, saying that without them, they would have to massively increase premiums or exit the individual market.
Many insurers have already priced their plans for the coming open enrollment period, which begins Nov. 1.
The leaders of Senate Health Committee have been working toward a bipartisan deal to fund the payments for two years in order to stabilize the markets in the short term.
But progress was halted when lawmakers tried to pass a last-ditch ObamaCare repeal bill from Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) last month, and the sides have still not reached an agreement.
The decision on the payments comes after Trump on Thursday signed an executive order aimed at loosening ObamaCare restrictions on insurance plans, which also could help destabilize the law.
President Trump will scrap subsidies to health insurance companies that help pay out-of-pocket costs of low-income people, the White House said late Thursday. His plans were disclosed hours after the president ordered potentially sweeping changes in the nation’s insurance system, including sales of cheaper policies with fewer benefits and fewer protections for consumers.
The twin hits to the Affordable Care Act could unravel President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement, sending insurance premiums soaring and insurance companies fleeing from the health law’s online marketplaces. After Republicans failed to repeal the health law in Congress, Mr. Trump appears determined to dismantle it on his own.
Without the subsidies, insurance markets could quickly unravel. Insurers have said they will need much higher premiums and may pull out of the insurance exchanges created under the Affordable Care Act if the subsidies were cut off. Known as cost-sharing reduction payments, the subsidies were expected to total $9 billion in the coming year and nearly $100 billion in the coming decade.
“The government cannot lawfully make the cost-sharing reduction payments,” the White House said in a statement.
It concluded that “Congress needs to repeal and replace the disastrous Obamacare law and provide real relief to the American people.”
In a joint statement, the top Democrats in Congress, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, said Mr. Trump had “apparently decided to punish the American people for his inability to improve our health care system.”
“It is a spiteful act of vast, pointless sabotage leveled at working families and the middle class in every corner of America,” they said. “Make no mistake about it, Trump will try to blame the Affordable Care Act, but this will fall on his back and he will pay the price for it.”
Lawmakers from both parties have urged the president to continue the payments. Mr. Trump had raised the possibility of eliminating the subsidies at a White House meeting with Republican senators several months ago. At the time, one senator told him that the Republican Party would effectively “own health care” as a political issue if the president did so.
“Cutting health care subsidies will mean more uninsured in my district,” Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Republican of Florida, wrote on Twitter late Thursday. She added that Mr. Trump “promised more access, affordable coverage. This does opposite.”
But Speaker Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, praised Mr. Trump’s decision and said the Obama administration had usurped the authority of Congress by paying the subsidies. “Under our Constitution,” Mr. Ryan said, “the power of the purse belongs to Congress, not the executive branch.”
The future of the payments has been in doubt because of a lawsuit filed in 2014 by House Republicans, who said the Obama administration was paying the subsidies illegally. Judge Rosemary M. Collyer of the United States District Court in Washington agreed, finding that Congress had never appropriated money for the cost-sharing subsidies.
The Obama administration appealed the ruling. The Trump administration has continued the payments from month to month, even though Mr. Trump has made clear that he detests the payments and sees them as a bailout for insurance companies.
This summer, a group of states, including New York and California, was allowed to intervene in the court case over the subsidies. The New York attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, said on Thursday night that the coalition of states “stands ready to sue” if Mr. Trump cut off the subsidies.
What the administration has done to weaken the health law.
Mr. Trump’s decision to stop the subsidy payments puts pressure on Congress to provide money for them in a spending bill.
Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee and the chairman of the Senate health committee, and Senator Patty Murray of Washington, the senior Democrat on the panel, have been trying to work out a bipartisan deal that would continue the subsidy payments while making it easier for states to obtain waivers from some requirements of the Affordable Care Act. White House officials have sent mixed signals about whether Mr. Trump was open to such a deal.
The decision to end subsidies came on the heels of Mr. Trump’s executive order, which he signed earlier Thursday.
With an 1,100-word directive to federal agencies, the president laid the groundwork for an expanding array of health insurance products, mainly less comprehensive plans offered through associations of small employers and greater use of short-term medical coverage.
It was the first time since efforts to repeal the landmark health law collapsed in Congress that Mr. Trump has set forth his vision of how to remake the nation’s health care system using the powers of the executive branch. It immediately touched off a debate over whether the move would fatally destabilize the Affordable Care Act marketplaces or add welcome options to consumers complaining of high premiums and not enough choice.
Most of the changes will not occur until federal agencies write and adopt regulations implementing them. The process, which includes a period for public comments, could take months. That means the order will probably not affect insurance coverage next year, but could lead to major changes in 2019.
“With these actions,” Mr. Trump said at a White House ceremony, “we are moving toward lower costs and more options in the health care market, and taking crucial steps toward saving the American people from the nightmare of Obamacare.”
“This is going to be something that millions and millions of people will be signing up for,” the president predicted, “and they’re going to be very happy.”
But many patients, doctors, hospital executives and state insurance regulators were not so happy. They said the changes envisioned by Mr. Trump could raise costs for sick people, increase sales of bare-bones insurance and add uncertainty to wobbly health insurance markets.
Chris Hansen, the president of the lobbying arm of the American Cancer Society, said the order “could leave millions of cancer patients and survivors unable to access meaningful coverage.”
In a statement from six physician groups, including the American Academy of Family Physicians, the doctors predicted that “allowing insurers to sell narrow, low-cost health plans likely will cause significant economic harm to women and older, sicker Americans who stand to face higher-cost and fewer insurance options.”
While many health insurers remained silent about the executive order, some voiced concern that it could destabilize the market. The Trump proposal “would draw younger and healthier people away from the exchanges and drive additional plans out of the market,” warned Ceci Connolly, the chief executive of the Alliance of Community Health Plans.
Administration officials said they had not yet decided which federal and state rules would apply to the new products. Without changing the law, they said, they can rewrite federal regulations so that more health plans would be exempt from some of its requirements.
The Affordable Care Act has expanded private insurance to millions of people through the creation of marketplaces, also known as exchanges, where people can purchase plans, in many cases using government subsidies to offset the cost. It also required that plans offered on the exchanges include a specific set of benefits, including hospital care, maternity care and mental health services, and it prohibited insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions.
The executive order’s quickest effect on the marketplaces would be the potential expansion of short-term plans, which are exempt from Affordable Care Act requirements. Many health policy experts worry that if large numbers of healthy people move into such plans, it would drive up premiums for those left in Affordable Care Act plans because the risk pool would have sicker people.
“If the short-term plans are able to siphon off the healthiest people, then the more highly regulated marketplaces may not be sustainable,” said Larry Levitt, a senior vice president for the Kaiser Family Foundation. “These plans follow no rules.”
Mr. Trump’s order would also eventually make it easier for small businesses to band together and buy insurance through entities known as association health plans, which could be created by business and professional groups. A White House official said these health plans “could potentially allow American employers to form groups across state lines” — a goal championed by Mr. Trump and many other Republicans — allowing more options and the formation of larger risk pools.
Association plans have a troubled history. Because the plans were not subject to state regulations that required insurers to have adequate financial resources, some became insolvent, leaving people with unpaid medical bills. Some insurers were accused of fraud, telling customers that the plans were more comprehensive than they were and leaving them uncovered when consumers became seriously ill.
The White House said that a broader interpretation of federal law — the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 — “could potentially allow employers in the same line of business anywhere in the country to join together to offer health care coverage to their employees.”
The order won applause from potential sponsors of association health plans, including the National Federation of Independent Business, the National Restaurant Association, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Associated Builders and Contractors, a trade group for the construction industry.
The White House released a document saying that some consumer protections would remain in place for association plans. “Employers participating in an association health plan cannot exclude any employee from joining the plan and cannot develop premiums based on health conditions” of individual employees, according to the document. But state officials pointed out that an association health plan can set different rates for different employers, so that a company with older, sicker workers might have to pay much more than a firm with young, healthy employees.
“Two employers in an association can be charged very different rates, based on the medical claims filed by their employees,” said Mike Kreidler, the state insurance commissioner in Washington.
Mr. Trump’s order followed the pattern of previous policy shifts that originated with similar directives to agencies to come up with new rules.
Within hours of his inauguration in January, he ordered federal agencies to find ways to waive or defer provisions of the Affordable Care Act that might burden consumers, insurers or health care providers. In May, he directed officials to help employers with religious objections to the federal mandate for insurance coverage of contraception.
Both of those orders were followed up with specific, substantive regulations that rolled back Mr. Obama’s policies.
In battles over the Affordable Care Act this year, Mr. Trump and Senate Republicans said they wanted to give state officials vast new power to regulate insurance because state officials were wiser than federal officials and better understood local needs. But under Thursday’s order, the federal government could pre-empt many state insurance rules, a prospect that alarms state insurance regulators.
Another part of Mr. Trump’s order indicates that he may wish to crack down on the consolidation of doctors, hospitals and other health care providers, a trend that critics say has driven up costs for consumers. Mr. Trump said that administration officials, working with the Federal Trade Commission, should report to him within 180 days on federal and state policies that limit competition and choice in the health care industry.
Insurers have said the move will destabilize the individual market and increase premiums by at least 20 percent.
In a move insurers have long said would destabilize the individual market and increase premiums by at least 20 percent, the Department of Health and Human Services late Thursday ended cost-sharing reduction payments.
At least one state attorney general, AG Eric Schneiderman of New York, has said he would sue the decision. The court granted a request to continue funding for the subsidies, Schneiderman said.
California may also sue the administration over the decision.
“I am prepared to sue the #Trump Administration to protect #health subsidies, just as when we successfully intervened in #HousevPrice!” California AG Xavier Becerra tweeted Thursday night.
In May, Schneiderman and Becerra led a coalition of 18 attorneys general in intervening in House v. Price over the cost-sharing reduction payments.
The cost-sharing reductions payments will be discontinued immediately based on a legal opinion from Attorney General Jeff Sessions, said Acting HHS Secretary Eric Hargan and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma.
“It has been clear for many years that Obamacare is bad policy. It is also bad law,” HHS said. “The Obama Administration, unfortunately, went ahead and made CSR payments to insurance companies after requesting – but never ultimately receiving – an appropriation from Congress as required by law. In 2014, the House of Representatives was forced to sue the previous Administration to stop this unconstitutional executive action. In 2016, a federal court ruled that the Administration had circumvented the appropriations process, and was unlawfully using unappropriated money to fund reimbursements due to insurers. After a thorough legal review by HHS, Treasury, OMB, and an opinion from the Attorney General, we believe that the last Administration overstepped the legal boundaries drawn by our Constitution. Congress has not appropriated money for CSRs, and we will discontinue these payments immediately.”
Trump tweeted this morning, “The Democrats ObamaCare is imploding. Massive subsidy payments to their pet insurance companies has stopped. Dems should call me to fix!”
Insurers reached and America’s Health Insurance Plans did not have an immediate comment on the ending of the subsidies.
The move to end CSRs comes weeks before the start of open enrollment on Nov. 1, but many insurers had submitted rates reflecting the end of the subsidies that allowed them to offer lower-income consumers lower deductibles and out-of-pocket costs.
America’s Essential Hospitals said it was alarmed by news of administration decisions that could create turmoil across insurance markets and threaten healthcare coverage for millions.
“This decision could leave many individuals and families with no options at all for affordable coverage,” said Bruce Siegel, MD, CEO of America’s Essential Hospitals. “We call on Congress to immediately shore up the ACA marketplace and to work in bipartisan fashion, with hospitals and other stakeholders, toward long-term and sustainable ways to give all people access to affordable, comprehensive care.”
Today’s CSR decision follows yesterday’s executive order from President Trump to allow for association health plans that could circumvent Affordable Care Actmandates on coverage. The executive order must go through the federal rulemaking process and may also face legal challenges.
“Health plans remain committed to certain principles. We believe that all Americans should have access to affordable coverage and care, including those with pre-existing conditions. We believe that reforms must stabilize the individual market for lower costs, higher consumer satisfaction, and better health outcomes for everyone. And we believe that we cannot jeopardize the stability of other markets that provide coverage for hundreds of millions of Americans,” said spokeswoman Kristine Grow. “We will follow these principles – competition, choice, patient protections and market stability – as we evaluate the potential impact of this executive order and the rules that will follow. We look forward to engaging in the rulemaking process to help lower premiums and improve access for all Americans.”
The American Academy of Family Physicians and five other medical associations representing more than 560,000 doctors have expressed serious concerns over the effect of President Trump’s executive order directing federal agencies to write regulations allowing small employers to buy low-cost insurance that provides minimal benefits.
In a joint statement, the AAFP, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Physicians, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Osteopathic Association and the American Psychiatric Association strongly rejected the order they said would allow insurers to discriminate against patients based on their health status, age or gender.
Republicans tried to repeal and replace the ACA, and since that failed are trying to end consumer protections under the law, according to U.S. Representative Bill Pascrell Jr., a Democrat from New Jersey and a member of the Ways and Means Committee.
“Republicans have been on the warpath trying to end important consumer protections that the ACA affords, including protections for people with pre-existing conditions and required coverage for services that people actually need, like mental health care,” Pascrell said. “Now that they’ve failed in that endeavor, the Trump Administration is trying to use the back-door with this executive order.”
A Congressional Budget Office analysis released in August said the CSRs, which cost an estimated $7 billion a year, could end up costing the federal government $194 billion over a decade.
Trump’s executive order will likely include a provision making it easier for employers to set aside some money, tax-free, to help their workers pay insurance premiums. This one hasn’t gotten as much attention yet as some of the other policies Trump is expected to pursue, but it’s a big deal — one insurers fear could push more people into a shaky market.
The details: Employers already can set aside some pre-tax dollars to help cover employees’ health care costs. Trump’s executive order will likely expand those programs so that they can be used to help employees cover the premiums for an individual insurance policy, an insurance industry official told me.
The reactions:
Insurers are afraid this will give employers an incentive to stop offering traditional health benefits: Why go to all the trouble of finding and offering a health care plan if you can just offer your workers some money to go buy their own?
“That would be survivable, I think,” if the individual market were more stable, the official said. But because that market is shaky, insurers are nervous.
Another fear: Employers might be able to offer coverage to their younger employees, while using these new funds to shift older workers, who tend to have higher health care costs, into the individual market.
The unknowns: Dumping workers into the individual market, even with help paying their premiums, would likely trigger penalties under the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate, the insurance official said. That might be a disincentive to use these new options — if the Trump administration were planning tough enforcement of the employer mandate.
The bottom line: Other sections of Trump’s executive order will likely pull healthy people out of the individual market; this one could push unhealthy people into it. Insurers are uneasy about both sides of that equation, and say they haven’t had a chance to offer the policy feedback previous administrations would have sought out.
What else to expect from Trump’s executive order
Here’s a quick rundown of what else to expect from today’s executive order:
The order itself probably won’t fill in the details of how its policy changes would work. Look for broad outlines, with the nitty-gritty coming separately — probably in the form of a proposed rule from the Labor Department.
Although the public will technically have an opportunity to comment on that proposed rule, the insurance industry official told me the final version is largely already written.
The policy:
Association health plans: Trump will likely make it easier for individuals (for example, a group of freelancers) to band together and buy insurance like a large employer would.
New associations will likely need some form of approval before they can start buying insurance, but insurers don’t expect that process to be much more than a rubber stamp.
Short-term plans: Trump is expected to let people hang onto short-term, stopgap policies for a full year; they’re currently limited to three months. Those plans don’t cover much and don’t have to comply with many of the ACA’s consumer protections.
Total impact: Insurers and independent policy experts fear that both of those measures would weaken the individual market by pulling healthy people out of it and into skimpier, cheaper coverage.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday that rolls back a number of Affordable Care Act (ACA) provisions that set minimum requirements for health plans.
The order will allow small businesses and groups of people to band together and buy insurance as an association. The association health plans (AHP) available to them do not have to meet the requirements of the ACA, such as protection for people with pre-existing conditions and essential health benefits.
In addition, the order expands the use of short-term plans that also have looser requirements and allows plans to be sold across state lines.
Dive Insight:
Broadly, the executive order loosens the requirements health plans must meet and shifts regulation away from federal levels. This could lower out-of-pocket costs for people who don’t use much care, but would likely result in major cost increases for people with pre-existing conditions.
The biggest concern with offering these plans is that it would lead payers to cherry pick young, healthy people who are less expensive for payers. But separating them from people who will need services creates an unbalanced risk pool. That can quickly lead to prohibitive out-of-pocket costs for people who have a pre-existing condition or who unexpectedly need high-cost care.
There are still several steps to be taken before the order could have a real impact. HHS and the Department of Labor have been instructed to write new regulations which will go through the regular notice and comment process. The specifics of those regulations will be important to how the order ultimately plays out. Also, the order will almost certainly see a legal challenge. Still, it signals that Trump’s White House is ready to find ways of undercutting the ACA despite the high-profile legislative failures earlier this year.
It’s far from the first sign, though. HHS has drastically cut back efforts to promote this year’s open enrollment period, which begins Nov. 1. The ACA’s overall advertising budget was slashed by 90%, community groups that receive federal funding to help people enroll have been devastated by cuts and HHS recently barred regional directors from participating in enrollment events.
Short-term plans are inexpensive for people who are healthy, but they can exclude people with pre-existing conditions. They have previously been allowed for a limited stretch, such as three months, but extending that time and allowing these plans to count toward the individual mandate will mean an unstable risk pool.
Allowing plans to be sold across state lines is a staple of conservative health policy, but there is little reason to believe it would actually lower costs. There are also many unanswered questions about how these plans would be relegated.
President Trump is expected to sign an executive order on Obamacare this week that would allow people to buy cheaper health insurance with fewer regulations, targeting healthcare goals that eluded congressional Republicans all year.
The full details of the executive order have not been released, but enough information has been reported to reveal its overall framework. Trump would direct the Departments of Labor, Treasury and Health and Human Services to make changes to regulations so more people could band together to buy “association health plans” which would allow individuals or small businesses to band together, such as members of a Chamber of Commerce, to buy plans sold across state lines. The order also would allow people to buy short-term health insurance plans for longer than the Obama administration allowed and would encourage the use of health savings accounts.
Both association health plans and short-term plans are less expensive than Obamacare plans because they offer limited coverage. They don’t guarantee same-cost coverage, or any coverage, for people with pre-existing illnesses and they do not cover a broad range of medical care, from addiction treatment to maternity care.
Critics have referred to the plans as “junk insurance,” warning that expanding access to them would take customers back to the days before the passage of Obamacare, formally known as the Affordable Care Act. They also warn that providing such options would peel more people from Obamacare’s exchanges, leaving an even sicker — and costly — population with Obamacare plans.
But people who don’t receive federal help paying for their premiums, meaning people who make more than $48,240 for an individual or $98,400 for a family of four, and who do not have a pre-existing illness, may look to use one of the options. Many of those customers are facing double-digit premium increases in 2018. The number of people who have unsubsidized health insurance is pegged at anywhere from 6 to 9 million people. Some will face insurance that is so expensive that under Obamacare they will not be required to pay the law’s penalty if they decide not to get coverage.
The executive order could offer an alternative, but it’s not clear how quickly the plans will become available to customers. Open enrollment for Obamacare begins Nov. 1 and runs through Dec. 15, and officials at the different agencies may not be able to change regulations in time for the start of 2018. The White House declined to provide details about the timeline for implementing the executive order.
Kathy Bakich, national health compliance practice leader at Segal Consulting, said the association health plan regulations may take longer than the short-term plans because the administration may have to propose new rules and take public comments, which could take months. The original rules took more than a decade to create, she said.
“There is a legitimate need in the marketplace for new types of systems to allow small employers to band together,” she said. “Whether this is the right way to do it is a tough question.”
It’s not clear how far the changes to the regulations can go. Depending on how they are written, they raise potential openings for fraud or for insolvency if claims exceed an association’s ability to pay them out, because states won’t be able to regulate plans that are sold elsewhere to crack down on problems or revoke licensing. Bakich raised the possibility of another option, known as reinsurance, that would inject federal funding into the exchanges so that higher-cost claims were paid for while others who have coverage would not see premium increases, but there is little appetite among most Republicans for such a proposal.
Instead, association health plans have been pushed even among House members, who passed a bill to allow more of them earlier this year.
“Unlike larger organizations, America’s small businesses are limited in their ability to negotiate for lower healthcare costs for their millions of employees,” said Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., chairwoman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee. “It’s time to level the playing field. That’s why the committee advanced and the House passed common-sense legislation to allow small businesses to band together through association health plans.”
Trump had been discussing the idea of association health plans with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., for months. On Tuesday he said on Twitter that he was moving to act because Congress “can’t get its act together on healthcare.” Paul chimed in as well, sharing Trump’s tweet and calling it a “great plan” and a “big deal for millions of Americans.”
“Sen. Paul brought this idea to President Trump as a way to fix many problems in the individual market without more regulations and spending,” Doug Stafford, chief strategist for Paul’s political action committee, said in an email. “They have worked on this for quite some time now and are pleased it will be enacted soon.”
The association health plans could allow members of different industries to band together or allow individuals to join in. The proposal has been billed as one that would allow people to buy insurance across state lines because health plans could be located in states with fewer regulations, which would make them less expensive.
The proposal on short-term plans may be easier to tackle. The Obama administration changed the rules for short-term plans in fall 2016, saying they could be offered for only 90 days at a time, meaning that a customer’s deductible would renew if he were to purchase a plan again at a later date. Prior to that, insurers stretched the definition of “short-term,” with some providing coverage for as long as 364 days. It’s not clear what the difference in pricing will be, but in 2016 the average price for an Obamacare premium was $393 a month and short-term plans averaged about $124 a month. By 2017 unsubsidized premiums for mid-level Obamacare plans had risen across the country by an average of 22 percent and are expected to rise in the double-digits again next year.
Insurers have said that the increases are a result of uncertainty over how the Trump administration or Congress would change Obamacare, but also from incurring losses from selling the plans, which younger, healthier and cheaper enrollees haven’t flocked to.
Obamacare, Bakich said, left a gap in terms of dealing with people who don’t think they can afford the robust coverage and also say they don’t want a wide range of services.
“They just want to be protected from bankruptcy and buy the catastrophic plan and be protected from losing everything in a medical crisis,” she said.
Kev Coleman, head of research and data for HealthPocket, a website that helps consumers compare and buy health plans, said he is a proponent of allowing short-term plans to be used for a longer period, saying that industry data show people use them for about six months and that they are meant to be transitional.
Short-term plans and Obamacare plans have locked in rates with states for 2018 and that will not change the individual market, he said.
He also disputed that the short-term plans would be destabilizing to the Obamacare exchange, noting that the Obama-era regulations went into effect in April and that the number of people who used them previously were small. Data from 2015 peg customers at 148,100.
“This market has been around for decades and it hasn’t been a destabilizing force,” Coleman said.
Larry Levitt, senior vice president for special initiatives at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said on Twitter that people who don’t receive subsidies but who have pre-existing illnesses such as cancer or diabetes would be particularly vulnerable because the short-term and association plans wouldn’t cover their medical needs.
“Short-term insurance plans can offer inexpensive coverage to currently healthy people, but they would exclude people with pre-existing conditions,” he wrote. “If healthy people can enroll in short-term plans and avoid the individual mandate penalty, the ACA marketplaces could collapse. Anything that creates a parallel insurance market for healthy people will lead to unaffordable coverage for sick people.”
But Coleman said working within the existing Obamacare system hasn’t worked.
“Politicians interested in optimizing the health of ACA risk pools would be well-advised to work backwards from consumers’ insurance priorities in order to arrive at a compelling market solution,” Coleman said. “You can’t achieve healthy risk pools without a product that has broad appeal.”
HENRY KOTULA 