Must-Read: Neera Tanden and Tophir Spiro: The bipartisan way to strengthen health care

Must-Read: A good way forward on health care:

Neera Tanden and Tophir Spiro: The bipartisan way to strengthen health care: “Provide greater certainty for insurers by guaranteeing continued payments of ACA subsidies, a step that could help reduce average premiums by as much as 19 percent… https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-bipartisan-way-to-strengthen-health-care/2017/07/18/b2e2b444-6bef-11e7-b9e2-2056e768a7e5_story.html

…reimburse insurers for covering high-cost patients who need more expensive medical treatments. Such a solution has already proved effective in Alaska, which cut the rate of premium increases by 75 percent, and in Maine, where premiums fell by 20 percent in the first year after it was enacted. We estimate that providing $15 billion to states for this kind of reinsurance would help lower premiums by more than 14 percent. Furthermore, because this funding would lower premiums, it would save money on tax credits—resulting in an overall cost of slightly more than $4 billion per year. Working together, Congress could easily find health-care savings to pay for this reinsurance. There should easily be majority support for both these proposals, as guarantees of ACA subsidies and reimbursements for high-cost patients are already found in the BCRA.

Finally… assist those areas of the country that have one or no insurers. Republican senators such as Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri have previously supported the idea of filling insurance gaps for these underserved counties. There are several gap-filling options…. In counties that were underserved as of July 1, insurers could be exempted from paying the health-insurance tax. The government could offer a public option in the form of a guaranteed choice plan in communities without sufficient competition, particularly rural areas. People in underserved counties could be allowed to buy into the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. The three components of this proposed bipartisan solution would quickly earn the overwhelming support of insurance commissioners, actuaries, economists and policy experts from across the political spectrum…