Two ACA related stories from yesterday.
The first is from the Hill on the Cost Sharing Reduction subsidies:
Key House Republicans on healthcare say they want to find a way to fund ObamaCare payments that they previously sued the Obama administration over.
The payments, known as cost-sharing reductions, reimburse insurers for providing discounted deductibles for low-income ObamaCare enrollees. If the payments were canceled, insurers warn they could pull out of the market because of the hole left in their budgets, causing chaos….
top Republicans say they realize they need to fund the payments. Providing that funding would go a long way to stabilizing the market and removing a major source of insurer anxiety
If CSR is funded with 100% certainty, insurers will get into the market. Every other risk can be priced into the premiums that are to be submitted this summer. CSR cut-off risk effectively can not be priced into rate submissions. If CSR is cleanly funded, that would be an excellent indicator that the Trump Administration will at most clip the ankles of the ACA instead of making a studs up tackle straight into its knees.
And now onto Kansas:
Big news: KS legislature has sent Brownback a Medicaid expansion bill. Now has 10 days to sign or veto. https://t.co/0DyqoIrGHS
— Sarah Kliff (@sarahkliff) March 28, 2017
Large but short of veto-reversing super-majorities in both houses of the Kansas legislature just voted for Medicaid expansion. Gov. Brownback will most likely veto the bill because of argle-bargle-cargle reasons. But there is a flurry of states that are pushing forward on Medicaid expansion. Georgia most likely will submit an Indiana style waiver, but Maine may try yet again to expand as they have a demonstrated legislative coalition to expand.