Don’t let Health Insurers hold Americans hostage

The coming weeks will see U.S. health insurance companies attempt to preserve what amounts to an extortion racket. Already, some carriers have claimed they will either exit the Obamacare exchanges entirely in 2018, or submit dramatically higher premium increases for next year, if Congress does not fund payments to insurers for cost-sharing reductions. While insurers claim “uncertainty” compels them to make these business changes, in reality their roots are the companies’ gross incompetence and crass politics.

While Obamacare requires insurers to lower certain low-income individuals’ deductibles and co-payments, and directs the executive agencies to reimburse insurers for those cost-sharing reductions, it nowhere gives the administration an explicit appropriation to do so. The Obama administration made payments to insurers without an explicit appropriation from Congress, and was slapped with a federal lawsuit by the House of Representatives for it.


Insurers claim they need certainty regarding the payments before committing to the exchanges for 2018. But insurers never had a guarantee about the payments continuing in 2017. I noted in a blog post last May that the new president could easily cut off the subsidy payments unilaterally. The week after I published my post, Judge Rosemary Collyer ruled in favor of the House of Representatives in its lawsuit. Although Collyer stayed her order pending an appeal, she ruled that the Obama administration needed an explicit appropriation from Congress to continue paying cost-sharing reductions to insurers.

Either the Companies Are Mismanaged Or Playing Politics.

Read more at The Federalist