I have written frequently about the idea that “government should not be a risk business has to manage” (inter alia, here and here). The front page of today’s Wall Street Journal has an article about the problems health insurers are having in knowing what the rules will be before they set prices for health insurance policies for 2018:
“Health insurers, facing fast-approaching deadlines to file plans for next year’s Affordable Care Act marketplaces amid uncertainty about the law’s fate, are putting off key business decisions as they scour for clues on social media and in the hallways of Washington. …
Continuing uncertainty will force more cautious strategies, insurers say, such as bigger rate increases, or pullbacks or withdrawals, because they can no longer stomach the risk.
‘We spend a lot of time looking at media and social media to see if we can glean any useful information,’ said Kirk Zimmer, executive vice president of Sanford Health Plan, which offers ACA plans in North and South Dakota. …
Insurers say they were whipsawed by the Trump administration’s moves last week. President Donald Trump threatened to stop funding the ACA’s cost-sharing reduction subsidies, which help lower-income ACA enrollees with costs such as deductibles, in an effort to prod Democrats to negotiate over a health bill. Insurers are also worried about the future of the ACA’s mandate for people to have insurance, because they fear enforcement could be limited or eliminated. …
‘People are terribly confused,’ said J. Mario Molina, CEO of Molina Healthcare Inc., which offers ACA plans in nine states and has said it is considering pulling back. ‘There’s a lot of posturing. ... We need some certainty, and we can’t just have people making pronouncements.’”
This is pathetic. Companies doing business with the government should not have to look at social media to try to figure out what the federal government is going to do for ACA policies next year. How can you run a business if your customer won’t tell you the terms of the deal – or might change them after you agree to participate and set your prices.
Before Democrats start talking about how bad Donald Trump is, however, they need to remember “the good old days” of 2009-2016 when the Obama administration was constantly changing rules under Obamacare to try to get it to work (they never did get it right). Plus, the federal government was issuing new rules and interpretations all the time, changing the basis on which businesses operate and what costs they have to pay.
One would think that this should not be a partisan issue. Issuing clear rules – on a timely basis – and not changing them all the time. These should be things that everybody could agree on. But in Washington – and the United States – today, I am not sure it is possible.
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