Tornado Alley (PROG)

[mr40]

Millions of people who were happy with their insurance and doctors lost both when Obamacare took over their healthcare!

President Trump finally made good on his promise to yank funding from a key set of Obamacare subsidies.

The administration announced late Thursday night that it would immediately stop supporting the cost-sharing subsidies that reimburse insurers for reducing the deductibles and co-pays of lower-income Obamacare enrollees. Trump has been paying the subsidies on a month-to-month basis, unnerving many insurers.

What does this mean for the nearly six million people who receive these subsidies? And what about the more than 10 million Americans enrolled in Obamacare?

The short answer: Insurers must continue providing these cost-sharing discounts -- even though they won't be paid for them. That's because the subsidies are required by the Affordable Care Act.

Many carriers already anticipated Trump would eliminate the funding and are hiking premiums substantially for 2018. Others, however, didn't do so. They may now try to raise rates or even pull out of the exchanges.
Enrollees who qualify for premium subsidies -- which are separate and unaffecmiddle-class have to pay much more, though they may need to switch plans to keep their rates steady. But middle class Americans who earn too much to get premium subsidies could get walloped by higher rates.

Also, Trump's move is expected to unleash multiple lawsuits from insurers, state regulators and consumer advocates seeking to force the administration to continue the payments.

Now that the funding is terminated, insurers' reaction will vary, experts said. The move comes at a tough time, less than three weeks before open enrollment for 2018 begins. Rates are set and contracts for 2018 have been signed in most states.
"It introduces a lot of chaos, but this doesn't threaten its future," Larry Levitt, senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, said of the Affordable Care Act. "Those insurers that have built in [the end of the funding] are totally fine."
Insurers that assumed the cost-sharing subsidy payments would be discontinued requested an additional 2% to 23%, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis published in August.
Carriers are levying the rate hikes in different ways. Some are spreading it out across all their plans, but others are limiting it to just silver-tier polices -- the plans eligible consumers must purchase to receive the cost-sharing subsidies. In California, for instance, insurers will levy a surcharge of up to 27% on silver-level plans.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/13/news/economy/trump-obamacare-subsidies/index.html