At The White House, An Emerging Split Over Obamacare Payments
A decision must be made in the weeks ahead about whether to continue paying out key cost-reduction subsidies for people who buy insurance on the exchanges or to cut them off. The latter would deal a possibly mortal blow the to the health law's individual insurance market. Meanwhile, brokers are increasingly fed up by unpaid commissions, and consumers who gained coverage via the health law are now wondering about what the future holds.
Politico:
White House Divided On Obamacare Payments
The disintegration of the latest Obamacare repeal bid in the House has thrown the health law’s fate back to a divided circle of White House advisers wrestling with whether to pay out key subsidies — or cut them off and blow up the health law. The aides have limited time to figure things out; health plans must decide in June whether to stay in Obamacare insurance markets next year or pull out. (Dawsey, Kenen and Haberkorn, 4/5)
Modern Healthcare:
Thousands Of Brokers Exit HealthCare.Gov As Plan Commissions Go Unpaid
Each year since the launch of HealthCare.gov, insurance broker Craig Paulson faces a difficult question: Should he continue to sell individual market plans even though insurance companies increasingly refuse to pay commissions? If his Utah-based insurance brokerage firm, Altura Benefits, stops selling exchange plans, consumers may be left with lower quality coverage or none at all. In the past year, Aetna announced it would stop paying any commissions on the individual market in Utah. Molina Healthcare later announced that it wouldn't pay for commissions on special enrollment plans. (Dickson, 4/5)
Georgia Health News:
People Who Got Coverage Through ACA Wonder About The Future
Like many residents of the Athens area, both women have gotten advice from Harold Weber, a health care navigator at the Athens Neighborhood Health Center, a safety net clinic supported partly by a federal grant... For many of Weber’s clients, health insurance is a novelty and not a given. The reality that government action could end the coverage they have now is taken as a fact of life. (Lichtenwalter, 4/5)
