Insurance CEOs haven't been speaking up for Obamacare except for one
President Trump and congressional Republicans finally goaded the health insurance industry into defending the Affordable Care Act this week — sort of. But the industry’s pusillanimous response to the GOP’s point-blank threat to Obamacare’s survival is a reminder that health insurance companies, which have made hundreds of millions of dollars from the law, have in many ways been its worst enemies.
The health insurers’ rare defense of the law came via separate letters from the industry’s lobbying arms, America’s Health Insurance Plans and the BlueCross BlueShield Assn., to Trump and to congressional leaders. The letters warn that the Republican failure to bring “stability” to the individual insurance market threatens to drive more insurers away, push up premiums and other costs, and burden hospitals and other providers with more unpaid bills.
But the letters amounted to less than a full-throated defense. For one thing, they focused on the law’s so-called cost sharing reductions, or CSRs.
These are subsidies offered to households in the individual insurance market with incomes below 250% of the federal poverty level. The subsidies, which help cover out-of-pocket expenses such as copays and deductibles, are paid directly to the insurance carriers.
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-insurance-companies-20170413-story.html
