Keep an eye on the helpful ACADeathSpiral Blog from U of H Law Prof Seth Chander. Seth reports on a nugget buried in a 225-page HHS document released last week.

Many individuals, including me, have claimed that President Obama’s recent decision to permit insurers to “uncancel” certain individual plans that do not contain Essential Health Benefits could destabilize insurance markets. The Notice of Benefit and Payment Parameters just released appears to validate that assertion. Stripped of bureaucratese, the HHS document basically says that insurers are right to be disconcerted by the President’s about face.

Here is the key paragraph:

If lower health risk individuals remain in a separate risk pool, the transitional policy could increase an issuer’s average expected claims cost for plans that comply with the 2014 market rules. Because issuers would have set premiums for QHPs in accordance with 45 CFR 156.80 based on a risk pool assumed to include the potentially lower health risk individuals that enroll in the transitional plans, an increase in expected claims costs could lead to unexpected losses.

Seth summarizes in plain English what is going on here:

So, the government wants help in figuring out what to do. One method it is contemplating involves technical adjustments the Risk Corridors program in a way that would get insurers more money (pp. 101-105).  Although I will confess to considerable difficulty in understanding exactly what it is that HHS suggesting, the basic idea, as I understand it, would be to assume that those who, by virtue of the President’s about face, “uncancel” their policies would have had claims expenses equal to 80% of the average claims of the rest of the pool (page 103-04). HHS will then, on a state-by-state basis figure out what the position of the insurer would have been and try to adjust Risk Corridors in such so that the position of the insured after application of adjusted Risk Corridors is similar to that which it would have been in had these persons who pay the same premium as the rest but who tend to have only 80% of the claims expenditures enrolled in their plan.

And what authority does HHS have to do this, in our “nations of laws,” as the President put it?

It is not clear to me where the statutory authority to make this change comes from. Section 1342 of the ACA (42 U.S.C. 18062) does not define its key terms of “target amount” and “allowable costs” in a fashion that would appear to my eye to extend to hypothetical costs and hypothetical premiums. I will also confess to being unsure as to who would have standing to challenge this proposed give away of taxpayer money to the insurance industry.

And what will this cost? HHS has no estimate.

Because of the difficulty associated with predicting State enforcement of 2014 market rules and estimating the enrollment in transitional plans and in QHPs, we cannot estimate the magnitude of this impact on aggregate risk corridors payments and charges at this time.

Seth gives it a go.

What is clear to me, however, is the proposed reform, by necessity, will result in greater previously unbudgeted expenditures by the federal government. If we are really talking about making insurers whole and the people in question might have profited insurers something like $1,000 a person, the federal government appears to be suggested a change in regulations that could cost it hundreds of millions of dollars.  The HHS Notice declines to put an exact figure on the cost of the change:

…HS is probably correct in saying it is difficult to estimate the cost of the proposed changes to Risk Corridors.  I don’t think we have a good feel for how many people will return to the plans President Obama has carved out for special treatment.  It does look, however, as if a floor of a couple of hundred million dollars on the cost of the proposal would be quite reasonable. This, of course, could give some ammunition to those, such as Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who have called for repeal of the Risk Corridors provision as an insurance “bailout.” (For a discussion, look here, here and here)

Thanks to Seth for doing the analysis HHS hopes no one does.