Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma, said Congress should appropriate money for the cost-sharing subsidies to health insurers. “I don’t think anybody wants to disrupt the markets more than they already are,” he said. (Courtesy: Gabriella Demczuk/The New York Times)
(Robert Pear, The New York Times) – The Trump administration says it is willing to continue paying subsidies to health insurance companies under the Affordable Care Act even though House Republicans say the payments are illegal because Congress never authorized them.
The statement sends a small but potentially significant signal to insurers, encouraging them to stay in the market.
The future of the payments has been in doubt because of a lawsuit filed in 2014 by House Republicans, who said the Obama administration was paying the subsidies illegally.
Without the subsidies, insurance markets could quickly unravel. Even more insurers could withdraw from the public marketplaces where more than 10 million Americans obtained coverage last year.
The Affordable Care Act requires insurers to reduce deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs for certain low-income consumers. The “cost-sharing” subsidies, which total $7 billion a year, compensate insurers for these discounts. Seven million people selecting marketplace plans for 2017 qualified for cost-sharing subsidies. They account for 58 percent of the people signing up for plans this year.
House Republicans sued the Obama administration, saying that the spending — in the absence of an appropriations law — was unconstitutional. A Federal District Court judge agreed and ordered a halt to the payments, but suspended her order to allow the government to appeal.
