Legislators push for reforms as Trump threatens to halt payment “bailouts”

Without reimbursement payments, insurance premiums could skyrocket next year

Legislators push for reforms as Trump threatens to halt payment “bailouts”

Life & Health

By Lyle Adriano

Legislators are working on introducing short-term reforms for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) despite President Trump’s threats to pull the plug on reimbursement payments.

On July 30, Trump tweeted that he might withhold cost-sharing reduction (CSR) payments – which he called “bailouts” – from ACA-participating insurers if a new healthcare bill is not approved. CSRs enable insurers to keep low-income individuals covered under the program.

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Despite the threat, the Senate Health, Labor, Education and Pensions Committee – led by Chairman Lamar Alexander, R-TN – will continue to conduct bipartisan hearings in September over how the individual health insurance market can be improved on.

“If your house is on fire, you want to put out the fire, and the fire in this case is the individual health insurance market,” Alexander said in a statement.

National Association of Insurance Commissioners president Julie McPeak said on Wednesday that insurance companies would likely hesitate at locking in their rates for 2018 if they are not even sure if they will be receiving CSR payments that year.

“Telling those insurers who are already contractually bound to provide coverage through the rest of 2017 that CSRs won’t exist makes it very, very difficult for us, as regulators, to ask them to find contracts to ante up for 2018,” McPeak explained.

ABC News reported that Alexander’s short-term priority is to get the President to approve CSR payments for the next two months and to pass a bill guaranteeing insurance funds for all of 2018, which will include CSR payments.

“It is reasonable to expect that the insurance companies would then lower their rates,” the senator said.


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