A top executive for Blue Cross Blue Shield warned Americans to expect their health insurance premiums to significantly increase in 2019 due to a decision Saturday by the Trump administration to cease supplementing health insurers for covering less healthy members.
The decision takes a big step down the path of reverting to when health insurers could refuse to provide coverage to those with chronic illnesses such as diabetes or with pre-existing conditions such as cancer.
According to Justine Handelman, a vice president for BCBS, the company will be left with no choice but to significantly narrow its coverage. The governments aid to BCBS and other insurers through risk adjustment payments helped them cover the bigger pool of clients created by the Affordable Care Act when it ruled in 2010 that insurers could no longer discriminate against those who typically require more health care than others.
In an interview with the New York Times, Handelman added Saturdays decision will undermine Americans access to affordable care, particularly for those who need medical care the most.
The ACA also forbade insurance companies from charging the chronically ill higher rates.
To help cover the cost of these more expensive members, insurance companies chip into a fund from which those with more expensive members could be compensated.
An additional benefit of the program is that it encouraged insurers to participate in the Marketplace, ACAs program for those who cannot get affordable health benefits through their jobs.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the program, said Saturday it will halt payment of the $10.4 billion insurers had expected this fall from expenses incurred last year.
Without the funding, insurers say they are left little choice but to curtail their offerings.
MORE THAN 130 million Americans are classified as having pre-existing medical issues, according to the nonpartisan Center for American Progress. Before the ACA was passed, many of those experienced discrimination by the health insurance industry by being charged higher rates for chronic conditions such as high blood pressure or denied coverage altogether for serious conditions such as heart disease.
For some, Obamacare was their first chance at health insurance.
The current administration says this is a new day in health care one that will make us yearn for yesterday.
Susan Lynn
