Good news everyone! The Alexander-Collins ACA stabilization bill funds the CSR portion of BHPs for plan year 2018. Crisis averted! Well… is it? Back in August, I hypothesized that BHP funding may be unaffected by CSR funding. I would currently mark that as incomplete given what has occurred since. The administration decided that I was wrong, cut off that funding and then NY and Minnesota sued. If this bill is passed, the lawsuit would be rendered moot since they are narrowly suing for the moneys they expected but did not receive (completely reasonable, of course). To recap: this bill appropriates funds for the CSR component of the 2018 BHP funding, which is the subject of a lawsuit. This bill does 2 other things (I guess it technically does a lot more than 2 things but for our purposes, 2 things): it appropriates funds for CSRs permanently and it appropriates funds for 1332 waivers. Most people think that by funding CSRs, we move on from the BHP funding headache. The argu
Here’s the question: if the federal government, for whatever reason, stopped making Cost Sharing Reduction (CSR) payments to health insurers, would federal funding of Basic Health Plan (BHP) programs in New York and Minnesota be reduced in kind? Let’s take a look! The amount the federal government pays a state for the BHP program is clearly defined in the original law: The amount determined under this paragraph for any fiscal year is the amount the Secretary determines is equal to 85 95 percent of the premium tax credits under section 36B of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, and the cost-sharing reductions under section 1402, that would have been provided for the fiscal year to eligible individuals enrolled in standard health plans in the State if such eligible individuals were allowed to enroll in qualified health plans through an Exchange established under this subtitle. That’s a long way of saying 95% of PTCs and CSRs had this program not superseded the normal exchang