#University of Findlay Deadline

[9jacompass]

University Of Findlay International Scholar Award 2023-Apply Now

University Of Findlay International Scholar Award 2023-Apply Now

Findlay University-International students are here invited to apply for the University of Findlay University of Findlay International Scholar Award 2023 to study in USA. The scholarships which is highly competitive, is available to students who have worked hard in to earn good grades and advance your education. The University of Findlay believes in recognizing that hard work through scholarships…

[mikemortgage]

Dairy farmers say denting supply management in NAFTA deal would be ‘devastating’

MONTREAL — Nearly 1,000 kilometres from Washington, where a team of top Canadian negotiators sit in 11th-hour NAFTA discussions, Peter Strebel works under a cloud of concern at the rural Quebec dairy farm his father founded in 1976.

The Quebec milk producer is worried that rumblings that Canada may sacrifice part of the sacred cow of supply management as a concession in trade negotiations with the United States would “punish” the dairy industry, open the floodgates to American milk products and prompt thousands of farm closures north of the border.

“There would be lots of bankruptcies … It would be devastating,” he said from his farm south of Montreal.

“We’ll probably have to cut back on investment, maybe lay off a couple workers. I don’t know how it would be done.”

Canadian dairy operates under a supply management system, in which farmers are protected from competition because the government blocks out foreign production with high tariffs and sets quotas to limit production and prevent market saturation. With traditional market forces removed, the government decides how much farmers are paid for their production, helping to keep farmers’ incomes stable.

The protectionist policy, a staple of Canadian agriculture for more than 40 years, has come under periodic attack from U.S. President Donald Trump.

And as trade talks hit a fever pitch ahead of a pending Friday deadline, Strebel and others fear that the Canadian government is ready to make concessions on dairy.

More than 15 per cent of the Canadian dairy market is already opening up to imports under terms of the Trans-Pacific Partnership signed in March. Any further dents to supply-side protection would imperil the business, said Strebel, who represents his region on the board of the Milk Producers of Quebec.

Strebel’s 150 cows churn out 5,000 litres of milk per day, which is trucked off to 115 processing facilities — waypoints on the path to products ranging from Yoplait yogurt to local cheese.

Several potential concessions are of particular concern to him and Canada’s 11,000 dairy producers, the vast majority of whom are located in Quebec and Ontario.

One is Canada’s domestic milk ingredient pricing system. The Class 7 pricing agreement struck in 2016 has effectively restricted U.S. exports of ultra-filtered milk used to make dairy products, industry experts say.

The policy allows Canadian dairy processors to buy domestic milk at world market prices instead of higher prices controlled by the national supply management system. U.S. dairy groups argue the policy provides processors with an incentive to cut milk imports and intentionally blocks American products.

But the head of the Dairy Farmers of Ontario believes scrapping Class 7 would be detrimental to the Canadian industry.

“Either we’d try to get less capital cost per unit of milk shipped and try and live that way, or go broke — or just try to ride it out for a few more years and then quit,” said Ralph Dietrich, who chairs the advocacy group and co-owns a dairy farm in southwestern Ontario.

Should supply management suffer a blow at the trade table, Strebel wondered if Canada would compensate with hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies, or rethink its ban on bovine growth hormone for dairy cows, which the U.S. allows as a means to boost milk production.

Robert Wolfe, a professor emeritus at Queen’s University who specializes in agriculture trade policy, pointed to the possibility of devalued quotas. Much like the medallion system that regulates the number of taxi drivers, quotas mean a farmer has the right to produce a certain amount of the product.

Any new farmer has to buy in, and the rights don’t come cheap — anywhere from $20,000 to $43,000.

“That quota is the right to sell a certain amount of milk. But if anybody can sell milk, then that quota that you’ve spent a lot of money on is worthless,” he said. “For the typical dairy farmer, we’re talking millions.”

Slashing supply management or lowering tariff rates would have a ripple effect, particularly for farmers with recent capital investments and bigger debt loads, said Al Mussell, research lead for Agri-Food Economic Systems in Guelph, Ont.

“There are some farmers that have reinvested in facilities and expanded in more efficient facilities, but are relatively new and financially leveraged who could have a great deal of difficulty in that environment because they’ve lost some of their ability to generate revenue,” Mussell said.

However, supply management is also one of the few cards the Trudeau government has left to play at the bargaining table after the U.S. and Mexico reached their own side deal on Monday.

Defending dairy farmers, who enjoy artificially high prices and exorbitant incomes, threatens to hurt the steel, aluminum and automotive industries during trade negotiations unless concessions are made, said Martha Hall Findlay, president and chief executive of the Canada West Foundation.

“Why are we sacrificing those sectors, those jobs, those Canadians, for a small number of now wealthy producers?” she wrote in a paper released Wednesday.

Findlay called on Ottawa to dismantle supply management, “not because Trump says so, but because it’s in Canada’s best interests.”

Companies in this story: (TSX:SAP)

from Financial Post https://ift.tt/2PR5tIr via IFTTT Blogger Mortgage Tumblr Mortgage Evernote Mortgage Wordpress Mortgage href="https://www.diigo.com/user/gelsi11">Diigo Mortgage

[kristinsimmons]

ACA Market Stabilization Push Is On But Success Is Uncertain

By STEVEN FINDLAY

A critical test in Congress comes this week in year 2 of the ACA wars. Will lawmakers do the right thing?

It’s up in the air—again. Congress has until this Friday at midnight to pass a budget bill to fund the government through Sept. 30.   That bill is widely considered to be the last “must-pass” legislation before the mid-term elections.

As such, it’s probably the last chance lawmakers will have to enact measures aimed at stabilizing the ACA marketplaces for 2019.   Health plans start pulling their bids together in May and June and the deadline for final submissions is in September.

As of this writing, it’s unclear whether House Republican leaders will even include an ACA stabilization provision in their version of the budget bill. In the Senate Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Susan Collins (R-ME) have submitted a proposal and are pressing hard for inclusion and a vote. (See details of the bill below.)

According to media reports, President Trump told the two Republicans on Saturday he would support their effort.   And Senate leader McConnell is also said to be supportive. But as drafted, the measure contains a poison pill: a provision that would forbid the use of federal dollars to help pay for insurance policies that provide abortions. Democrats say that’s a deal-breaker.

The renewed push now for ACA marketplace stabilization comes primarily because the repeal of the individual mandate penalty takes affect on Jan. 1, 2019.   That’s projected to trigger premium increases of between 7 and 15 percent, varying by state.   But, on top of that, the Trump administration has proposed policy changes that experts predict will spur additional premium increases—that, in turn will lead to coverage losses.  Namely, the administration wants to permit people to buy and keep short-term “bridge” health insurance for 364 days, up from the current 90 days.   Such plans—designed for purchase outside of open enrollment periods—do not have to meet the requirements of ACA insurance. They can also be sold and bought outside the exchanges. Consumers buying them don’t get subsidies (tax credits).

The Urban Institute estimates that premiums in the ACA marketplaces would increase by an average 18.2 percent in the 43 states that don’t prohibit or restrict short-term plans. The increases would be due to both repeal of the mandate penalty and expansion of short-term coverage.

An estimated 7.6 million people who buy coverage in the non-group market (on and off exchange) would lose coverage—5.5 million due to mandate repeal and 2.1 million due to short-term plan expansion. But the Urban Institute researchers estimate that about 4.2 million would buy short-term coverage, if it’s expanded to 364 days.   (Whether such coverage should be renewable or not, and how, is also hotly debated.) About 200,000 people have short-term plans in 2018.

The net impact on the number of uninsured is not easily predictable amid such market turbulence (which will also include changes in state ACA policies).   It could be as low as 3 to 4 million or as high as 6 to 7 million.

Two additional analyses—released this week—add to the portrait of what could transpire in 2019. Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms (CHIR) and researchers from the Urban Institute asked 10 insurance companies participating in the individual market in 28 states and D.C. what they planned.

All expressed concerns that the administration’s actions would worsen the risk pool in the marketplaces and lead their own companies or others to further reduce their market participation., or drop out altogether.

The online health insurance purchasing site eHealth surveyed 19 insurers.   Sixty percent said they’d stick it out, and might even expand their offerings. The rest were not sure yet what they’d do.

The Trump administration has also proposed expanding association health plans. That, experts agree, will also siphon off low-risk consumers from the marketplaces, leading to premium increases.

The short-term and association health plan proposals are not yet finalized and could be scaled back after stakeholder comments are taken into account. That process is already surfacing many problems and downsides. For example, the association health plan proposal drew 900 comments, most of them negative.

The comment from a coalition of 17 state attorneys general was particularly harsh.   They wrote that the association health plan proposal would open the floodgates for fraudulent insurance schemes and, as drafted, violated federal law (ERISA), according to this account from CHIR.

Alex Azar, the new head of HHS, is very likely to take a fresh look at all this. But notably he has signaled loud and clear that he won’t undermine the White House’s efforts to slay the ACA dragon—this time via death by a thousand cuts. Up next from HHS and the White House, reportedly, are proposed new rules to allow an expansion of health reimbursement accounts.

Adding to the increasingly toxic stew is a lawsuit by 20 red states, filed in February, arguing that the ACA is no longer constitutional following the mandate penalty repeal.   Led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel, the lawsuit claims that without the individual mandate penalty the remainder of the ACA “must also fall” – because the law’s current legality is based on the mandate as a tax.

The Supreme Court upheld the ACA’s individual mandate in 2012. The justices did not agree then with the Obama administration’s main argument that the mandate penalty was valid under the Commerce Clause. Instead, the justices said that the mandate was a constitutional tax.

God only knows where that suit will end up—possibly back in the now-more-conservative Supreme Court in 2019.

Back to this week. After failing last year to help the marketplaces out amid the roiling political turmoil of the ACA repeal effort, Alexander and Collins are pushing a package that includes funding for cost-sharing reduction (CSR) payments (around $8 billion a year) for three years, $10 billion in annual reinsurance funding for three years, additional ACA Section 1332 waiver flexibility for the states, and expanded eligibility for catastrophic plans.

As Katie Keith reports at the Health Affairs blog,

a preliminary analysis from the CBO shows that the Alexander/Collins proposal would reduce premiums by 10 percent in 2019 and 20 percent in 2020 and 2021.

Confusion surrounding the CSR payments—which defray insurers’ costs for eliminating or reducing deductibles and co-pays for low-income enrollees—could also prove vexing.   Trump nixed the payments in the fall of 2018 and thought he was being all “look-what-I-can-do-to kill-the-ACA.”

Whoops.   The end result was insurers manipulated the system and consumers shifted metal levels and got LARGER subsidies. That cost the federal government MORE money because subsidies rose with higher premiums.

Thus, new CSR funding would benefit the federal government, by reducing spending. But some subsidized enrollees might pay high premiums in 2019 if the CSR payments are renewed.   Unsubsidized consumers would pay less for certain plans, however.

In contrast, there’s much broader support for reinsurance. It would lower premiums for everyone, all analysts agree. Reinsurance is a well-established insurance mechanism; the Medicare Part D program has one.   And the ACA marketplaces had reinsurance from 2014 through 2016.

But reviving reinsurance is no slam-dunk either. Far-right conservatives continue to cast ACA market stabilization proposals as “insurance company bailouts.” Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Mike Lee (R-UT) and Representatives Mark Meadows (R-NC) and Jim Jordan (R-OH) lead that charge.

In a piece posted on the conservative National Interest web site, the Heritage Foundation’s Edmund Haislmaier and Robert Moffit say Congressional Republicans should focus “not on giving insurers more and bigger bailouts, but rather on giving their constituents more and better Obamacare opt-outs.”

So, the ACA wars continue.   We expected as much.   But it’s terribly destructive and hurts Americans, with the threat of even greater pain in 2019.

As with climate change, gun control, tax and trade policy, the Trump administration’s approach to health insurance is evidence-free, incoherent and anti-consumer. To borrow a phrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, the conservative’s approach would bear us back ceaselessly to the structure and (dys)function of the individual insurance market—with its crappy “junk” coverage—that existed before the ACA became law.

Democrats will need to dig in for the long fight, and this week push hard for a coherent ACA stabilization measure.

      ACA Market Stabilization Push Is On But Success Is Uncertain published first on https://wittooth.tumblr.com/

[isaacscrawford]

ACA Market Stabilization Push Is On But Success Is Uncertain

By STEVEN FINDLAY

A critical test in Congress comes this week in year 2 of the ACA wars. Will lawmakers do the right thing?

It’s up in the air—again. Congress has until this Friday at midnight to pass a budget bill to fund the government through Sept. 30.   That bill is widely considered to be the last “must-pass” legislation before the mid-term elections.

As such, it’s probably the last chance lawmakers will have to enact measures aimed at stabilizing the ACA marketplaces for 2019.   Health plans start pulling their bids together in May and June and the deadline for final submissions is in September.

As of this writing, it’s unclear whether House Republican leaders will even include an ACA stabilization provision in their version of the budget bill. In the Senate Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Susan Collins (R-ME) have submitted a proposal and are pressing hard for inclusion and a vote. (See details of the bill below.)

According to media reports, President Trump told the two Republicans on Saturday he would support their effort.   And Senate leader McConnell is also said to be supportive. But as drafted, the measure contains a poison pill: a provision that would forbid the use of federal dollars to help pay for insurance policies that provide abortions. Democrats say that’s a deal-breaker.

The renewed push now for ACA marketplace stabilization comes primarily because the repeal of the individual mandate penalty takes affect on Jan. 1, 2019.   That’s projected to trigger premium increases of between 7 and 15 percent, varying by state.   But, on top of that, the Trump administration has proposed policy changes that experts predict will spur additional premium increases—that, in turn will lead to coverage losses.  Namely, the administration wants to permit people to buy and keep short-term “bridge” health insurance for 364 days, up from the current 90 days.   Such plans—designed for purchase outside of open enrollment periods—do not have to meet the requirements of ACA insurance. They can also be sold and bought outside the exchanges. Consumers buying them don’t get subsidies (tax credits).

The Urban Institute estimates that premiums in the ACA marketplaces would increase by an average 18.2 percent in the 43 states that don’t prohibit or restrict short-term plans. The increases would be due to both repeal of the mandate penalty and expansion of short-term coverage.

An estimated 7.6 million people who buy coverage in the non-group market (on and off exchange) would lose coverage—5.5 million due to mandate repeal and 2.1 million due to short-term plan expansion. But the Urban Institute researchers estimate that about 4.2 million would buy short-term coverage, if it’s expanded to 364 days.   (Whether such coverage should be renewable or not, and how, is also hotly debated.) About 200,000 people have short-term plans in 2018.

The net impact on the number of uninsured is not easily predictable amid such market turbulence (which will also include changes in state ACA policies).   It could be as low as 3 to 4 million or as high as 6 to 7 million.

Two additional analyses—released this week—add to the portrait of what could transpire in 2019. Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms (CHIR) and researchers from the Urban Institute asked 10 insurance companies participating in the individual market in 28 states and D.C. what they planned.

All expressed concerns that the administration’s actions would worsen the risk pool in the marketplaces and lead their own companies or others to further reduce their market participation., or drop out altogether.

The online health insurance purchasing site eHealth surveyed 19 insurers.   Sixty percent said they’d stick it out, and might even expand their offerings. The rest were not sure yet what they’d do.

The Trump administration has also proposed expanding association health plans. That, experts agree, will also siphon off low-risk consumers from the marketplaces, leading to premium increases.

The short-term and association health plan proposals are not yet finalized and could be scaled back after stakeholder comments are taken into account. That process is already surfacing many problems and downsides. For example, the association health plan proposal drew 900 comments, most of them negative.

The comment from a coalition of 17 state attorneys general was particularly harsh.   They wrote that the association health plan proposal would open the floodgates for fraudulent insurance schemes and, as drafted, violated federal law (ERISA), according to this account from CHIR.

Alex Azar, the new head of HHS, is very likely to take a fresh look at all this. But notably he has signaled loud and clear that he won’t undermine the White House’s efforts to slay the ACA dragon—this time via death by a thousand cuts. Up next from HHS and the White House, reportedly, are proposed new rules to allow an expansion of health reimbursement accounts.

Adding to the increasingly toxic stew is a lawsuit by 20 red states, filed in February, arguing that the ACA is no longer constitutional following the mandate penalty repeal.   Led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel, the lawsuit claims that without the individual mandate penalty the remainder of the ACA “must also fall” – because the law’s current legality is based on the mandate as a tax.

The Supreme Court upheld the ACA’s individual mandate in 2012. The justices did not agree then with the Obama administration’s main argument that the mandate penalty was valid under the Commerce Clause. Instead, the justices said that the mandate was a constitutional tax.

God only knows where that suit will end up—possibly back in the now-more-conservative Supreme Court in 2019.

Back to this week. After failing last year to help the marketplaces out amid the roiling political turmoil of the ACA repeal effort, Alexander and Collins are pushing a package that includes funding for cost-sharing reduction (CSR) payments (around $8 billion a year) for three years, $10 billion in annual reinsurance funding for three years, additional ACA Section 1332 waiver flexibility for the states, and expanded eligibility for catastrophic plans.

As Katie Keith reports at the Health Affairs blog,

a preliminary analysis from the CBO shows that the Alexander/Collins proposal would reduce premiums by 10 percent in 2019 and 20 percent in 2020 and 2021.

Confusion surrounding the CSR payments—which defray insurers’ costs for eliminating or reducing deductibles and co-pays for low-income enrollees—could also prove vexing.   Trump nixed the payments in the fall of 2018 and thought he was being all “look-what-I-can-do-to kill-the-ACA.”

Whoops.   The end result was insurers manipulated the system and consumers shifted metal levels and got LARGER subsidies. That cost the federal government MORE money because subsidies rose with higher premiums.

Thus, new CSR funding would benefit the federal government, by reducing spending. But some subsidized enrollees might pay high premiums in 2019 if the CSR payments are renewed.   Unsubsidized consumers would pay less for certain plans, however.

In contrast, there’s much broader support for reinsurance. It would lower premiums for everyone, all analysts agree. Reinsurance is a well-established insurance mechanism; the Medicare Part D program has one.   And the ACA marketplaces had reinsurance from 2014 through 2016.

But reviving reinsurance is no slam-dunk either. Far-right conservatives continue to cast ACA market stabilization proposals as “insurance company bailouts.” Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Mike Lee (R-UT) and Representatives Mark Meadows (R-NC) and Jim Jordan (R-OH) lead that charge.

In a piece posted on the conservative National Interest web site, the Heritage Foundation’s Edmund Haislmaier and Robert Moffit say Congressional Republicans should focus “not on giving insurers more and bigger bailouts, but rather on giving their constituents more and better Obamacare opt-outs.”

So, the ACA wars continue.   We expected as much.   But it’s terribly destructive and hurts Americans, with the threat of even greater pain in 2019.

As with climate change, gun control, tax and trade policy, the Trump administration’s approach to health insurance is evidence-free, incoherent and anti-consumer. To borrow a phrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, the conservative’s approach would bear us back ceaselessly to the structure and (dys)function of the individual insurance market—with its crappy “junk” coverage—that existed before the ACA became law.

Democrats will need to dig in for the long fight, and this week push hard for a coherent ACA stabilization measure.

      Article source:The Health Care Blog

[kristinsimmons]

ACA Market Stabilization Push Is On But Success Is Uncertain

By STEVEN FINDLAY

A critical test in Congress comes this week in year 2 of the ACA wars. Will lawmakers do the right thing?

It’s up in the air—again. Congress has until this Friday at midnight to pass a budget bill to fund the government through Sept. 30.   That bill is widely considered to be the last “must-pass” legislation before the mid-term elections.

As such, it’s probably the last chance lawmakers will have to enact measures aimed at stabilizing the ACA marketplaces for 2019.   Health plans start pulling their bids together in May and June and the deadline for final submissions is in September.

As of this writing, it’s unclear whether House Republican leaders will even include an ACA stabilization provision in their version of the budget bill. In the Senate Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Susan Collins (R-ME) have submitted a proposal and are pressing hard for inclusion and a vote. (See details of the bill below.)

According to media reports, President Trump told the two Republicans on Saturday he would support their effort.   And Senate leader McConnell is also said to be supportive. But as drafted, the measure contains a poison pill: a provision that would forbid the use of federal dollars to help pay for insurance policies that provide abortions. Democrats say that’s a deal-breaker.

The renewed push now for ACA marketplace stabilization comes primarily because the repeal of the individual mandate penalty takes affect on Jan. 1, 2019.   That’s projected to trigger premium increases of between 7 and 15 percent, varying by state.   But, on top of that, the Trump administration has proposed policy changes that experts predict will spur additional premium increases—that, in turn will lead to coverage losses.  Namely, the administration wants to permit people to buy and keep short-term “bridge” health insurance for 364 days, up from the current 90 days.   Such plans—designed for purchase outside of open enrollment periods—do not have to meet the requirements of ACA insurance. They can also be sold and bought outside the exchanges. Consumers buying them don’t get subsidies (tax credits).

The Urban Institute estimates that premiums in the ACA marketplaces would increase by an average 18.2 percent in the 43 states that don’t prohibit or restrict short-term plans. The increases would be due to both repeal of the mandate penalty and expansion of short-term coverage.

An estimated 7.6 million people who buy coverage in the non-group market (on and off exchange) would lose coverage—5.5 million due to mandate repeal and 2.1 million due to short-term plan expansion. But the Urban Institute researchers estimate that about 4.2 million would buy short-term coverage, if it’s expanded to 364 days.   (Whether such coverage should be renewable or not, and how, is also hotly debated.) About 200,000 people have short-term plans in 2018.

The net impact on the number of uninsured is not easily predictable amid such market turbulence (which will also include changes in state ACA policies).   It could be as low as 3 to 4 million or as high as 6 to 7 million.

Two additional analyses—released this week—add to the portrait of what could transpire in 2019. Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms (CHIR) and researchers from the Urban Institute asked 10 insurance companies participating in the individual market in 28 states and D.C. what they planned.

All expressed concerns that the administration’s actions would worsen the risk pool in the marketplaces and lead their own companies or others to further reduce their market participation., or drop out altogether.

The online health insurance purchasing site eHealth surveyed 19 insurers.   Sixty percent said they’d stick it out, and might even expand their offerings. The rest were not sure yet what they’d do.

The Trump administration has also proposed expanding association health plans. That, experts agree, will also siphon off low-risk consumers from the marketplaces, leading to premium increases.

The short-term and association health plan proposals are not yet finalized and could be scaled back after stakeholder comments are taken into account. That process is already surfacing many problems and downsides. For example, the association health plan proposal drew 900 comments, most of them negative.

The comment from a coalition of 17 state attorneys general was particularly harsh.   They wrote that the association health plan proposal would open the floodgates for fraudulent insurance schemes and, as drafted, violated federal law (ERISA), according to this account from CHIR.

Alex Azar, the new head of HHS, is very likely to take a fresh look at all this. But notably he has signaled loud and clear that he won’t undermine the White House’s efforts to slay the ACA dragon—this time via death by a thousand cuts. Up next from HHS and the White House, reportedly, are proposed new rules to allow an expansion of health reimbursement accounts.

Adding to the increasingly toxic stew is a lawsuit by 20 red states, filed in February, arguing that the ACA is no longer constitutional following the mandate penalty repeal.   Led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel, the lawsuit claims that without the individual mandate penalty the remainder of the ACA “must also fall” – because the law’s current legality is based on the mandate as a tax.

The Supreme Court upheld the ACA’s individual mandate in 2012. The justices did not agree then with the Obama administration’s main argument that the mandate penalty was valid under the Commerce Clause. Instead, the justices said that the mandate was a constitutional tax.

God only knows where that suit will end up—possibly back in the now-more-conservative Supreme Court in 2019.

Back to this week. After failing last year to help the marketplaces out amid the roiling political turmoil of the ACA repeal effort, Alexander and Collins are pushing a package that includes funding for cost-sharing reduction (CSR) payments (around $8 billion a year) for three years, $10 billion in annual reinsurance funding for three years, additional ACA Section 1332 waiver flexibility for the states, and expanded eligibility for catastrophic plans.

As Katie Keith reports at the Health Affairs blog,

a preliminary analysis from the CBO shows that the Alexander/Collins proposal would reduce premiums by 10 percent in 2019 and 20 percent in 2020 and 2021.

Confusion surrounding the CSR payments—which defray insurers’ costs for eliminating or reducing deductibles and co-pays for low-income enrollees—could also prove vexing.   Trump nixed the payments in the fall of 2018 and thought he was being all “look-what-I-can-do-to kill-the-ACA.”

Whoops.   The end result was insurers manipulated the system and consumers shifted metal levels and got LARGER subsidies. That cost the federal government MORE money because subsidies rose with higher premiums.

Thus, new CSR funding would benefit the federal government, by reducing spending. But some subsidized enrollees might pay high premiums in 2019 if the CSR payments are renewed.   Unsubsidized consumers would pay less for certain plans, however.

In contrast, there’s much broader support for reinsurance. It would lower premiums for everyone, all analysts agree. Reinsurance is a well-established insurance mechanism; the Medicare Part D program has one.   And the ACA marketplaces had reinsurance from 2014 through 2016.

But reviving reinsurance is no slam-dunk either. Far-right conservatives continue to cast ACA market stabilization proposals as “insurance company bailouts.” Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Mike Lee (R-UT) and Representatives Mark Meadows (R-NC) and Jim Jordan (R-OH) lead that charge.

In a piece posted on the conservative National Interest web site, the Heritage Foundation’s Edmund Haislmaier and Robert Moffit say Congressional Republicans should focus “not on giving insurers more and bigger bailouts, but rather on giving their constituents more and better Obamacare opt-outs.”

So, the ACA wars continue.   We expected as much.   But it’s terribly destructive and hurts Americans, with the threat of even greater pain in 2019.

As with climate change, gun control, tax and trade policy, the Trump administration’s approach to health insurance is evidence-free, incoherent and anti-consumer. To borrow a phrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, the conservative’s approach would bear us back ceaselessly to the structure and (dys)function of the individual insurance market—with its crappy “junk” coverage—that existed before the ACA became law.

Democrats will need to dig in for the long fight, and this week push hard for a coherent ACA stabilization measure.

      ACA Market Stabilization Push Is On But Success Is Uncertain published first on https://wittooth.tumblr.com/