CSR

OK, bear with me.

First, I want you to click this link and read this long, wonky post from back in February about the ongoing CSR class action lawsuit saga and the potential consequences. I'll wait right here.

OK, done reading it?

For those of you too impatient to read the backstory, here's the VERY short version:

It isn't often that I write about anything Oklahoma-related, and it's rarer still that I post good news out of the...um..."labor omnia vincit" state (that's their slogan, I looked it up...), so today's a rare day indeed.

A couple of weeks ago I noted that at least 9 more states will be jumping onboard the #SilverSwitcharoo train for 2019, bringing the total to 30:

There were several stories over the past few days about a new, just-released report from the General Accounting Office (GAO) which examined how well/poorly the Trump Administration handled the 2018 Open Enrollment Period last year.

Many of the findings were things which I had been either predicting or documenting all year:

• Enrollment through Healthcare.gov Was 5 Percent Lower in 2018 than 2017
• Stakeholders Reported That Plan Affordability Likely Played a Major Role in Enrollment
• HHS Reduced Consumer Outreach for 2018 and Used Problematic Data to Allocate Navigator Funding
• HHS Did Not Set Numeric Enrollment Targets for 2018, and Instead Focused on Enhancing Certain Aspects of Consumers’ Experiences

We identified a list of factors that may have affected 2018 healthcare.gov enrollment based on a review of Department of Health and Human Services information, interviews with health policy experts, and review of recent publications by these experts related to 2018 exchange enrollment.

Factors related to the open enrollment period:

Thanks to David Anderson for the heads up on this. According to Caitlin Owens of Axios...

Senate Democrats, led by Sen. Patty Murray, are pushing to increase the Affordable Care Act's subsidies as part of a stabilization bill being renegotiated with Sen. Lamar Alexander. This would mean increasing the amount of financial assistance people receive, as well as making it available to more people.

• ...“We’re interested in both expanding access to subsidies and increasing their value. You’ve got two different sets of populations that will be impacted in different ways depending on how cost sharing” is structured, a Democratic aide told me.

Democrats also want to:

(Yes, I'm using an obscure Bradley Cooper movie title for this entry...it's the closest match I could think of )

(sigh) Yes, this is the second time I've used the same headline and clip.

According to The Hill, just moments ago:

WH to Dems: We’ll continue paying ObamaCare subsidies

The Trump administration has told Democrats it will continue paying controversial ObamaCare insurer subsidies, lowering fears that a fight over the issue could cause a government shutdown.

The move marks something of a shift for President Trump, who had threatened earlier this month to withhold the subsidies, known as cost-sharing reductions, as a way to move Democrats to negotiate on a healthcare overhaul.

"A shift"? He shifts so often he should be in the next Fast & Furious movie.

Rep. Tony Cardenas (D-Calif.), for one, said Wednesday that he doesn’t trust the president enough to take him at his word.

You don't say.

Hot off the presses:

A new Kaiser Family Foundation analysis finds that the average premium for a benchmark silver plan in Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplaces would need to increase by an estimated 19 percent for insurers to compensate for lost funding if they don’t receive federal payment for ACA cost-sharing subsidies.