Insurers Win in ACA Supreme Court Case
The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of insurers after Republicans in Congress defunded the ACA’s risk adjustment program used to pay insurers. The US government will now have to pay health insurance companies $12 billion.
The ruling essentially said the government could not promise money in this way and then renege on the agreement.
The risk adjustment program was an original part of the ACA that provided funds for insurers who lost money “covering everybody regardless of preexisting conditions.” This helped to ensure, in theory, that insurers would not raise rates to cover the potential extra cost. The issue was that the removal of the funding was met with insurers raising prices, so now we have an issue where prices were already raised, but now also the government has to pay the money anyway.
To learn more, see Buzzfeed News’ “Republicans Tried To Defund A Major Obamacare Program. Now The Supreme Court Says The Government Has To Pay Billions To Insurers.”