ON OCTOBER 25th the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its score of the Bipartisan Health Care Stabilisation Act, the cross-party effort by two senators, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Patty Murray of Washington, to shore up troubled health-insurance markets. The main goal of this bill is to restore, for two years, the payments to insurance companies that President Donald Trump cut off a couple of weeks earlier (see article). The budget experts predict that doing so would in fact end up saving the government money. But would the bill achieve its aim of stabilising insurance markets?
Restoring the payments should help reduce premiums, and hence encourage marketplace enrolment by healthy people. But the damage to the market in 2018 has already been done. Enrolment in the individual market opens on November 1st, and there is no time for premiums, which are agreed with state regulators...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/2yXZmw3
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