- Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Readies Insurance Market Stabilization Rule Modern Healthcare by Virgil Dickson—CMS has sent a rule designed to stabilize the individual health insurance market to the Office of Management and Budget for final review. The Trump administration hopes to finalize the rule very soon.The administration is rushing to publish the final rule to calm insurers, who are nervously trying to decide within the next two months whether to offer plans for 2018 and what to charge for premiums.The rule sent to OMB, which includes the CMS' responses to more than 4,000 public comments, takes steps to limit consumers' ability to enroll in plans outside the Affordable Care Act's annual open enrollment period.
- White House Divided on Obamacare Payments Politico by Josh Dawsey, Joanne Kenen and Jennifer Haberkorn—The disintegration of the latest Obamacare repeal bid in the House has thrown the health law’s fate back to a divided circle of White House advisers wrestling with whether to pay out key subsidies—or cut them off and blow up the health law. The aides have limited time to figure things out; health plans must decide in June whether to stay in Obamacare insurance markets next year or pull out. If billions of dollars of cost-sharing subsidies dry up, the plans are more likely to leave, possibly quite rapidly.
