BEYOND THE NUMBERS
Damaging House Bill Would Undo Health Reform Protections and Raise Small Business Premiums
The House this week is scheduled to consider a bill sponsored by Rep. William Cassidy (R-LA) that would allow insurance companies, through 2018, to continue to offer to any small employer the health insurance plans in the small group market that the insurers were selling in 2013.
In short, the bill is another attempt to undermine health reform and try to ensure it doesn’t succeed, as we explain in a new analysis:
Under the bill, such plans would not have to comply with the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) market reforms and consumer protections that otherwise apply to all health insurance plans offered in the small group market, starting in 2014.
The bill would go well beyond the existing Administration transition policy that permits states to allow insurers to continue — through 2016 — to offer non-ACA-compliant plans in the individual and/or small group market to individuals and employers who were previously enrolled in such plans. . . [T]he Cassidy bill would likely have serious adverse effects both on premiums in the small group market — causing them to rise substantially for many small firms — and on health reform’s consumer protections, such as the reform that prevents insurance companies from charging higher premiums to firms with older, less healthy workforces.
