Tuesday, November 19, 2013

More on Risk Mitigation in Obamacare

Senator Marco Rubio of Florida has an editorial in the WSJ noting some of the issues with risk mitigation.  As I said in my post below, stay tuned for action on this front.  Should be interesting.

A short quote from the article, which might be behind the WSJ paywall:

"Buried deep in the Department of Health and Human Services' press release that accompanied the president's Nov. 14 speech was this sentence: "Though this transitional policy was not anticipated by health insurance issuers when setting rates for 2014, the risk corridor program should help ameliorate unanticipated changes in premium revenue. We intend to explore ways to modify the risk corridor program final rules to provide additional assistance."
Risk corridors are generally used to mitigate an insurer's pricing risk. Under ObamaCare, risk corridors were established for the law's first three years as a safety-net for insurers who experience financial losses. While risk corridors can protect taxpayers when they are budget-neutral, ObamaCare's risk corridors are designed in such an open-ended manner that the president's action now exposes taxpayers to a bailout of the health-insurance industry if and when the law fails."


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