Insurance Commissioners And The Feds: Time For Some Relationship Counseling?

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) effectively created a shotgun marriage between state insurance regulators and the US Department of Health and Human Services who then had to provide oversight of their baby — the individual insurance market. The relationship has been complicated since the start: the insurance market has proved to be a problem child and the federal government has not been the most reliable spouse and parent recently. Next Wednesday’s Senate Health Education, Labor, and Pension (HELP) Committee hearing, “Stabilizing Premiums and Helping Individuals in the Individual Insurance Market for 2018: Insurance Commissioners,” with testimony from five state insurance commissioners, will provide a chance for some of the states—the parents with de facto custody—to make their grievances known. What can we expect to hear? Factors Behind Insurance Market Instability Insurance markets with unknown or unstable enrollment characteristics make it difficult for insurers to predict rates, and they react to that uncertainty by raising their premiums more than they would otherwise. Four years into the ACA, some individual markets are becoming less, not more, stable, and one can expect the commissioners to make that abundantly clear. Higher Prices, Less Insurer Participation A preliminary assessment by the Kaiser Family Foundation of 2018 rate filings in 20 states and DC found only six markets with a rate request increase for the benchmark (second-lowest cost silv...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Following the ACA Insurance and Coverage individual market Source Type: blogs