INDIANAPOLIS – Two health insurers announced today that they’d pull out of the Indiana individual marketplace for health care, largely because of efforts by Republicans and the Trump administration to destabilize the market. Anthem and MDwise both announced they would not have plans on the Indiana exchange this coming year, citing uncertainty over whether cost-sharing reduction subsidies included in Affordable Care Act would be paid this year. Republicans have repeatedly threatened to withhold the subsidies and otherwise sabotage the healthcare system to make their own bill look more appealing.
“Time and again, Republicans have made clear that they want to make it harder for Hoosiers to find affordable health insurance, purely for political purposes. Today, they’re disgracefully celebrating the fact that 77,000 Hoosiers lost their health care in order to make it easier to enact their bill that will take it away from 23 million more Americans,” said Will Baskin-Gerwitz, Senior Media Strategist for the Indiana Democratic Party. “Joe Donnelly has been working to improve the insurance marketplaces. Republicans want to blow them up.”
From the Indy Star: Two of four insurers will no longer sell Obamacare plans in Indiana
WASHINGTON – Anthem and MDwise, the two insurance providers which sold Obamacare plans in all of Indiana’s 92 counties this year, will not be offering 2018 plans on the health exchanges created by the 2010 Affordable Care Act.
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In announcing its decision, Anthem spokesman Tony Felts said it’s too difficult to know how to price health plans in the exchange “due to a shrinking and deteriorating market” and “continual changes and uncertainty in federal operations, rules and guidance.”
Those include whether the federal government will continue to pay insurance companies for the discounts they’re required to give low-income customers to help pay for deductibles and co-payments.
“A stable insurance market is dependent on products that create value for consumers through the broad spreading of risk and a known set of conditions upon which rates can be developed,” said spokesman Felts.
…Big uncertainties include whether Congress will change insurance rules, subsidies and coverage options in Republicans’ pending rewrite of the ACA.
In addition, the Trump administration could decide on its own to end the cost-sharing subsidies, which are the subject of a legal challenge brought by congressional Republicans.
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