news
ACAP Reacts to Issuance of STLDI Regulation
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: August 1, 2018
FOR MORE INFORMATION: Jeff Van Ness, (202) 204-7515
ACAP REACTS TO ISSUANCE OF STLDI REGULATION
WASHINGTON—Today, the Association for Community Affiliated Plans (ACAP) reacted to the issuance of new regulations regarding short-term, limited-duration insurance (STLDI), which will lead to the proliferation of junk insurance plans that fail to provide adequate health insurance coverage to most Americans.
“Fake insurance is no substitute for real coverage,” stated ACAP CEO Margaret A. Murray. “ACAP has long opposed this STLDI proposal as an arbitrary and capricious effort to do a regulatory end-run around the patient protections in the Affordable Care Act. Countless Americans will be hurt by this new regulation, from patients to providers.”
ACAP has previously condemned the Trump administration strategy of steering enrollees into short-term, limited-duration insurance. In an April op-ed in the Washington Examiner, Murray warned that STLDIs would lead to “Fewer benefits. Higher premiums. A drained risk pool. STLDIs threaten all three legs on which the individual health insurance market stands.”
In April, ACAP filed a written comment opposing the Trump Administration’s proposed STLDI regulation, stating that “STLDI coverage should not be marketed as an alternative to ACA-compliant coverage, as it simply is not a meaningful alternative. Additionally, the proposed regulation, especially when combined with recent other regulations recently finalized by this Administration, will have a deleterious impact on the individual market single risk pool – thus impacting the business stability for SNHPs offering individual market products.”
An ACAP-sponsored study from Wakely Consulting Group found the most direct impact of the proposed STLDI regulations to be the reduction in the number of healthy, young consumers in the individual market. Projections prepared by HHS estimate between 100,000 and 200,000 individuals would exit exchanges to take up coverage in STLDI plans in 2019. Wakely found the Trump administration to have grossly underestimated this impact, projecting instead that the entire ACA-compliant market would decrease between 400,000 and 790,000 enrollees.
About ACAP
ACAP represents 62 Safety Net Health Plans, which provide health coverage to more than 21 million people in 29 states. Safety Net Health Plans serve their members through Medicaid, Medicare, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Marketplace and other health programs. For more information, visit www.communityplans.net
# # #