House GOP reveals AHCA: Update - Repeal of ACA IS BACK ON

Dr. Acula

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Next Year, Iowans May Be Unable To Purchase Individual Insurance Policies Under Affordable Care Act

People in 94 of Iowa’s 99 counties may have no options in 2018 for buying individual healthcare polices on the state's insurance exchange that was created under the Affordable Care Act.

Currently nearly 48,000 people have insurance through Iowa's ACA exchange. But recently two of the three insurers providing individual plans announced they were leaving the Iowa market next year.

That left Minnesota-based Medica to be the exchange's likely sole participant. Now Medica is saying that it too may be leaving the state.

“Without swift action by the state or Congress to provide stability to Iowa’s individual insurance market, Medica will not be able to serve the citizens of Iowa in the manner and breadth that we do today," says spokesman Greg Bury in an emailed statement. "We are examining the potential of limited offerings, but our ability to stay in the Iowa insurance market in any capacity is in question at this point.”

One Iowan who will likely be affected if Medica leaves is Geoff Wood, who has purchased insurance through the exchange for every year that it’s been available. Wood owns a co-working space called Gravitate in downtown Des Moines, and often talks with people who are thinking about starting their own businesses.

"That’s something that we talk a lot about, is what that’s going to be like to insure yourself for the first time," he says. "I’ve been very concerned about all the changes for that reason, just really stunting the growth of new business in our state. As people are kind of job-locked into their existing employment situations."

While Medica is imploring both Iowa and Congress to take action, the Iowa Insurance Commission sees it as the responsibly of the federal government to bring stability to individual marketplace.

"Although individual state markets vary, I am in Washington (D.C.) along with other state insurance commissioners asking for action," says Iowa Insurance Commissioner Doug Ommen via email. "Long-term, the individual health insurance market under the ACA was and still is unaffordable and unsustainable. Iowa needs congressional action as soon as possible."

If nothing happens to salvage the Iowa exchange, Wood says that he or his wife, who is also an entrepreneur, might have to make a major lifestyle change.

"It's very possible that myself or my wife would have to potentially close down one of our businesses and go to work, so that we can provide coverage for our family," he says.

People living Allamakee, Clayton, Fayette, Howard and Winneshiek counties are also able to purchase individual healthcare polices through Gundersen, a Wisconsin-based insurer, and therefore would be less affected is Medica leaves. The company has until June 19 to decide if it will stay in Iowa.

Next Year, Iowans May Be Unable To Purchase Individual Insurance Policies Under Affordable Care Act
:francis:This shyt is fukked all up.
 

tru_m.a.c

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:francis:This shyt is fukked all up.
Indeed. The reports on what's really going with the market have been fukkn terrible if you ask me. This should be a headline on every major channel:
Medica Vice President Geoff Bartsh said his company would have continued selling insurance throughout Iowa if Wellmark and Aetna had stayed in the market. But Medica, which lost $1.5 million covering 14,000 Iowans last year, couldn’t afford to take on tens of thousands more from the other two carriers, he said.

“The decision wasn’t, ‘Should we continue?’ It was, ‘Should we be the only game in town?’” Bartsh said in an interview Wednesday.

But Bartsh said Congress and state officials would have to move quickly to firm up the market before mid-June, the deadline for carriers to submit proposed premium rates to state regulators. “Six weeks is a really short time,” he said. “…We need someone to do something.”

Medica would like to see a reintroduction of high-risk pools, to take on patients with histories of particularly expensive health needs. The insurer also wants Congress to reinstate a national “reinsurance” program, which helps shoulder costs when insured patients come down with extremely expensive health problems. Those two measures would help make insurers' annual costs more predictable, he said.
 

LHilla

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The $2 billion question: Here’s where the biggest obstacle to Republicans’ planned health-care overhaul could come in. If the bill isn’t found to save at least $2 billion over 10 years, Republicans won’t be able to use the so-called budget reconciliation process to pass it. Under that process, 51 votes are required to pass legislation in the Senate, versus 60. Not saving at least $2 billion would mean Republicans would have to start all over again by passing a new budget resolution, as Bloomberg reported.

Read more at: What to watch in the CBO’s score of the Republican health-care bill
 
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