Tuesday, May 15, 2018

In Health Affairs: If CMS ends silver loading

I've co-authored with David Anderson, Charles Gaba and Louise Norris a blog post in Health Affairs that surveys the fallout from Trump's cutoff of federal funding for Cost Sharing Reduction subsidies in 2018 and considers the likely effects if the Trump administration moves to block the current effective strategies that most states have employed for dealing with that cutoff.

That is, what happens if CMS administrator Seema Verma and/or HHS Secretary Alex Azar move to block states from allowing or instructing insurers in the individual market to price CSR into silver plans only, a strategy that has created discounts in gold and bronze plans?

Part one recounts the history of how states and insurers found their way to silver loading. Part two quantifies how many people likely benefited from discounted bronze and gold plans. Part three reviews the impact of the CSR cutoff on unsubsidized premiums. And Part four considers the likely effects on plan pricing and enrollment if HHS/CMS either forces individual market insurers to spread the cost of CSR evenly among all ACA-compliant plans or to spread it evenly among all plans sold on-exchange only.

Hope you'll take a look.

1 comment:

  1. Andrew:

    It was a foregone conclusion whether I would look or not. I looked. Nice job and clearly stated! Now how do we get our local politicians to read it as well as Gaba's short term plan and risk pool critique? Been nagging them excessively to visit Charles since we both reside in Michigan.

    ReplyDelete