INDIANAPOLIS – As the insurance marketplaces open tomorrow, Washington Republicans’ decision to halt crucial health subsidy payments will make it harder for nearly half of all Hoosiers to find affordable care on the exchanges.
According to a report this month in the Connersville News Examiner relying on AP data, nearly 70,000 of the 146,956 people who sign up for health care through the exchanges utilized crucial subsidies to insurers known as cost-sharing reductions (CSRs), which were cut off by the Trump Administration. Without those CSRs, nearly half of Hoosiers on the exchanges will now face drastic premium increases when they sign up.
This is one of several problems that Hoosiers signing up for health insurance on the exchanges will face when the markets open tomorrow. Republicans have sabotaged insurance options to subvert the law’s goals of affordable, accessible health care, either to make the law easier to repeal or simply out of spite.
This has most notably taken the form of the Trump Administration’s long-term indifference towards paying CSRs before ultimately deciding to halt them entirely. Congress could easily step in to restore the CSRs, and a bipartisan compromise has support from Senators on both sides of the aisle, including Joe Donnelly, but congressional Republicans have halted any effort.
“Republicans have set out to sabotage the Affordable Care Act and its health care markets any way they can, and as a result, nearly half of all Hoosiers signing up this year will face higher premiums thanks to the decision to halt CSRs alone,” said Will Baskin-Gerwitz, Senior Media Strategist for the Indiana Democratic Party. “Hoosiers know that Republicans are the ones who have thrown the marketplaces into chaos, and they’ll be the ones who face the blame for it. Instead of sabotaging the markets for political gain, why can’t Republicans work together to make it easier for Hoosiers to find affordable health care?”
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