A big decision was made last week by the Supreme Court, which could have negatively impacted millions of Americans receiving health insurance subsidies in states where the federally run exchange is used.
Known as the King v. Burwell case, the Court ruled against the lawsuit, which would have effectively ended health care subsidies for nearly 6 million people in the 34 states that did not set up their own health insurance exchange. It was originally expected that each state would implement their own insurance marketplace, such as the California run exchange (called CoveredCA). Instead, many states did not set up a state run marketplace and deferred to the federally run exchange, thus creating this policy debate.
Although those with subsidies through CoveredCA would not have been directly impacted, the repercussions of removing the subsidy for people in federally run exchanges could indeed have affected the insurance industry overall. Now that the Court has ruled, will struggling state exchanges opt to move to the federally run exchange? Stay tuned.
Phil Dougherty
OnlyHealthInsurance