Premiums will rise. Insurers will bail.
This is what insurers and health policy experts have already said would happen next year if President Trump stops funding a key set of Obamacare subsidies.
On Tuesday afternoon, the Congressional Budget Office will weigh in on what it expects will happen if Trump follows through on his threats to cease the payments for the cost-sharing subsidies.
The cost-sharing reduction payments go directly to insurers to reimburse them for reducing deductibles and co-pays for lower income enrollees. They are the subject of a court battle between the House of Representatives and the Trump administration, which inherited the case from the Obama administration. Trump has tried to use subsidies as a bargaining chip, first to get Democrats to the table and more recently to spur the Senate to return to its effort to repeal and replace the law.
Though there have been signs that Obamacare is stabilizing, the Republican drive to dismantle the health care law has left insurers very jittery. In particular, they want assurances that the cost-sharing subsidies will be funded through 2018.
Without that promise, many are hiking their rates. Insurers that assumed the cost-sharing subsidy payments would be discontinued added between 2% and 23% to their premium requests for next year, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey of 21 major cities released last week.
Other insurers aren’t waiting around to find out. Anthem is among the most recent to downsize its presence, announcing last week it was pulling out of Nevada and Virginia, while cutting its participation in Georgia nearly in half.