trump plumbing new depths of stupidity and maliciousness. Aside from causing serious harm to millions, he’ll end up costing taxpayers far more:
This year, cost-sharing payments have amounted to about $7 billion. Unless Congress moves to repeal or amend the Affordable Care Act—good luck with that—obligations of similar size will accrue through 2018 and beyond.
In other words, we’re about to see witness of the largest lawsuits, dollar-wise, in United States history.
What’s more, I think the lawsuits are viable. We’ve already seen a couple of district courts grant multi-million dollar judgments in litigation over risk corridor payments. And the risk corridor cases raise some tricky questions about what sorts of promises the federal government has made to insurers. The cost-sharing cases don’t. On the law, they’re really straightforward.
Now, Congress could always appropriate the money. That would stanch the bleeding and restore some confidence to the rattled insurance markets. Or, alternatively, Congress could prohibit the Judgment Fund from paying out any judgment in cost-sharing litigation, although that would amount to a government default on its obligations. The damage to the government’s reputation would be severe, as Craig Garthwaite and I discussed in this New York Times op-ed.
If Congress doesn’t act, it’s really the worst of all worlds. To compensate for the loss of cost-sharing payments, insurers will have to raise their premiums for silver plans. Because premium subsidies are keyed to the price of silver plans, the size of the subsidies will increase along with the rise in premiums. And because many more people are eligible for premium subsidies than for cost-sharing reductions, total federal outlays will actually increase.
So taxpayers will have to pay increased premium subsidies at the front end. Then they’ll also pay the cost-sharing money through litigation at the back end. It’s a financial bath, and for no good reason other than sheer political cussedness.
What a stupid, profligate, and unnecessary mess.
More edits: Congress is not going to pay:
https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/918684022129049601
Less insured for more money. So very Republican.
Edit: And as an aside, our company just renewed our coverage for the year; the choice was a 10% increase in premiums or increase the deductibles. They chose the later (it doubled.) For our parent company their costs rose 20% (they’re in PA.) AFAIK that has nothing to do with ACA but rather our insane health care system. Before long insurance just won’t be affordable even for employer provided coverage.