Megan McArdle has the roundup:
As Seth Chandler points out, Healthcare.gov doesn’t even let you see catastrophic plans if you’re more than 30 years old. Is now the time to be making technical changes to the website?
As Avik Roy points out, catastrophic plans aren’t that much cheaper than the so-called bronze plans. They’re also not eligible for subsidies. This is unlikely to be much help to folks who lost insurance; all it does is introduce some much-unneeded complexity to Healthcare.gov.
As Aaron Carroll points out, insurers calculated their premiums for this year on the expectation that the relatively healthy folks who were already buying insurance would be buying policies on the exchange. The insurers are not happy about this latest change, and Carroll predicts that they will ask the administration to push more money to them through the “risk corridors.” I think he’s right.
As Ezra Klein points out, this seriously undermines the political viability of the individual mandate.
Well call me Orville and put me in the microwave for two minutes.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member