Today was the day when Cost Sharing Reduction (CSR) subsidies were to be paid for insurers. The CSR obligation was incurred by the federal government on February 1st for all CSR qualified policies in effect for the month of February. There was some worry (mine especially) that given the former House vs Burwell case that is now House vs Price that the CSR money would not be paid out. If CSR money was not paid out, the current insurer contracts allows the carriers to immediately pull out of the Exchanges. Last week, carriers received notification of the amount of CSR that the feds thought they owed. And today, those payments should be arriving.
Transfers usually happen in the morning. If a small insurer had not received the cash by now, they would have been screaming about it and state regulators would be panicking as this would be a major adverse event that calls into question the solvency of smaller carriers.
I’ve been told by a couple of insurance industry folks that the CSR funds arrived and they are doing their monthly Scrooge McDuck swim.
Jacel
Love the Carl Barks reference to the Money Bin.
rikyrah
thanks for the info. Please keep us informed, Mayhew.
Neldob
More thanks.
Ben Vernia
In the HR v. Burwell/Price case, the House and DOJ submitted a joint motion to continue the appeal in abeyance with three month status checks, writing that “The purpose of the abeyance is to allow time for a resolution that would obviate the need for judicial determination of this appeal, including potential legislative action.”
On one level, I’m glad that the morons driving the cars decided not to play chicken today. On another level, it’s pretty rich that what the House found to be the intolerable violation of separation of powers of the Obama administration in paying the subsidies is apparently not so terrible now that the GOP is in power.