Iowa Sends Final Request to Make Changes to Obamacare Market
“In Iowa, we face an immediate collapsing market.”
Iowa has submitted a request to the federal government to make changes in a last ditch effort to save the state’s beleaguered Obamacare market. From Quad-City Times:
This November, the majority of the 72,000 Iowans purchasing plans through the exchange will have only one option — Minnesota-based Medica. Last week, Medica asked the state for an average rate increase of 56.7 percent because of the uncertainty over cost-sharing reductions.
The federal payments are made to insurers to help cover costs and expand access for low-income individuals, but the future of the payments are now in jeopardy.
If the federal government approves this stopgap measure, then Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield will return to the market.
These are the changes Iowa would like to make, according to The Hill:
State health officials want to reallocate hundreds of millions of federal dollars to help insurers pay for high-cost claims, as well as revamp the structure of federal tax credits that help people afford insurance.
The hope is that changing the tax credits would encourage a larger number of younger, healthier people to purchase insurance and help spread out costs.
The tax credits would provide a fixed level of financial assistance based on age and income. That’s in contrast with ObamaCare’s subsidies that are tied to the cost of health insurance plans.
“In Iowa, we face an immediate collapsing market. … Iowans deserve a healthcare system that better serves their needs,” Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) wrote in the application.
Iowa Insurance Commissioner Doug Ommen said that the state will proceed as if the government has approved the request since “open enrollment is a little more than two months away.”
He explained his concerns at a news conference and how much will change if the government doesn’t act on the state’s request. Quad-City Times continued:
One of Ommen’s primary concerns, he said, are those purchasing insurance through the exchange and living above the 400 percent poverty level — about 28,000 people — and who therefore are not eligible for subsidies. They likely would not be able to afford coverage and either would leave the insurance market or the state, he said Tuesday during a news conference.
“People who depart will be healthy, and that will leave us in an even worse circumstance,” he said.
The insurance division said a 55-year-old couple making $65,000 a year could pay as much as $33,000 annually for premiums.
“The economic impact on Iowa would be catastrophic for Iowa families, and we need the Iowa Stopgap Measure approved to help keep these individuals in our market so it can function,” Ommen said.
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Obamacare or Marginalcare, where millions of people are forced to pay a penalty in lieu of purchasing a financial product, millions more fall in the gap between expanded Medicaid and affordable health care, and everyone is forced to subsidize Planned Parenthood and clinical cannibalism. Very neo-National Socialist, and, notably, the abortion chambers are operated under the same privacy regime as their predecessors.
So now the states are essentially blackmailing the Fed govt.
Moar popcorn puh-leeeeeze!
How can anyone call this disaster the “Affordable” Care Act when it is patently UNaffordable? Hint: if it truly were affordable, there would be no need for subsidies to prop up that dead carcass.
Anyone trying to defend Obamacare on the grounds that it “bends the cost curve downward” has to go through mental gymnastics and contortions of logic to arrive at that “affordable” lie.
Just get the government out of “healthcare” entirely, before it becomes any more “affordable.”
Let’s hear it one more time. Thank You Justice Roberts!
Don’t do it, Feds. DON’T do it.
Does the law give the feds the authority to grant such waivers?
No??
Then don’t!
And, really, even if it does – still don’t. Let Obamacare collapse on its own.
Trump should appoint an HHS Sec that enforces the letter of the law on Obamacare – start by reversing ALL of the lawless “waivers” that Obama’s HHS Sec issued. And, most importantly, terminate the illegal bailouts of the insurers.
Simply announcing there will be no more illegal bailouts would result in multiple insurers leaving dozens of markets across the nation – crippling blow to Obamacare.
Oh, and make sure that public sector unions are made aware that the 40% “cadillac” tax on the best insurance policies in the nation, most of which go to people like themselves, will go into effect on time and be enforced. Think there are any school districts that can afford a 40% increase to their health insurance costs? No?? Yeah – they’ll ALL respond by cutting coverages to levels below which the “cadillac” tax kicks in. This would piss off the Dem’s most important constituency, and leave them in the position of having to clamor for Obamacare repeal so they can get their incredibly generous benefits back.