17.07.2018 10.34 CDT
At the core of the Administration’s actions to dismantle the ACA are actions that pull lives out of the risk pool; undermining the integrity of the ACA’s risk pools will undermine the stability of health insurance markets. This instability may prove to be yet another set of ACA-related headaches for employers.
Risk Pooling, Risk Shifting and Risky (Health Insurance) Business
It is difficult to measure the specific effects, of each of these actions, on health insurance markets. However, there is increasing evidence that the cumulative effects of these actions are reshaping health insurance markets in the United States.
Over the past year the Administration has taken a number of steps that serve to undermine the ACA by facilitating the movement of covered lives away from plans covered by the ACA - by increasing premiums, by discouraging carrier participation in ACA exchanges and by reducing behavioral barriers to dropping individual coverage. These actions represent traps for employers caught in the middle of this slow-motion ACA repeal.