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发帖数: 29846 | 1 D.C. Council Approves Tax to Aid Health Exchange
Proposal to Fund Insurance Exchange Starting Next Year
By
Louise Radnofsky
May 6, 2014 8:25 p.m. ET
The city council of Washington, D.C., voted Tuesday to allow a tax on all
health insurers selling inside the district to fund its Affordable Care Act
insurance marketplace.
The plan, submitted by the city's DC Health Link insurance exchange, gives
the city the power to tax all health-insurance carriers inside the district
for exchange funding. The council opted for taxing all carriers, not just
those selling in the exchange, to make the levy lower, according to a copy
of the approved resolution.
The proposal had the backing of Washington Mayor Vincent Gray and was
approved unanimously by the council. The plan will fund the exchange
starting next year, when it has a budget of $28.8 million. Beginning in 2015
, the exchanges that 14 states and the District of Columbia set up under the
law won't have federal funding and have to become self-sustaining.
Exchanges got hundreds of millions of dollars in federal startup funds.
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The district's exchange had said that around 45,000 residents signed up for
private coverage and Medicaid through the exchange in its first enrollment
window, which ended April 30. The relatively small number of participants in
private plans meant that just charging them for the operating costs of the
exchange would increase the costs of their insurance coverage significantly.
The assessment would likely be 1% on the amount of money each carrier took
in from health-insurance premiums, and wouldn't be directly levied on people
enrolled in the insurance plans, the exchange said. But insurers have
previously indicated that they have met the cost of new fees under the
health law by increasing premiums.
The exchange says the funding plan has the backing of two insurers selling
on the exchange, Kaiser Permanente and Aetna, AET +2.73% but has been
criticized by other carriers.
The national insurance industry trade association, America's Health
Insurance Plans, has questioned the legal basis for the proposal and
described it as open-ended and inappropriate because it is being applied to
carriers not selling on the exchange.
Those carriers include ones providing products such as disability income
insurance and long-term care coverage, which "derive no direct or indirect
benefit from the exchange," said Geralyn Trujillo, regional director for the
association, in a letter to the exchange when it was seeking comment on the
proposal.
The vote comes as the state-run exchanges grapple with their future, and
some have mulled whether to turn over their technical operations to the
federal government after a string of problems in their rollout.
Some have explored ways to fundraise by selling services including
advertising, and others are trying to work out how to charge fees.
Mila Kofman, the district's exchange director, said the exchange had
considered all options before backing the new assessment and believed that
it was fairest. She said companies selling supplemental products did get
benefit from the exchange, including by creating a large number of people
with basic health insurance who could qualify for their other products as a
result.
Ms. Kofman also said she believed the district should continue running its
own exchange, noting the federal government's own difficulties serving 36
states through the HealthCare.gov website. "If we relied on the federal
government to set it up for us it would have been very difficult for people
to get coverage for a very long time," she said.
The district's exchange has done relatively well among the state-run
exchanges, with a high proportion of younger people who have signed up for
private coverage through it. But its sign-ups are also limited by the
district's size and the large number of residents who are covered through
employer-sponsored insurance or Medicaid. Only around 10,000 people picked
private individual coverage through the exchange this year, according to
data published by the federal government. | b*x
发帖数: 5456 | | m********8
发帖数: 7463 | 3 此计甚善！
早就说过，只需全额稽缴到位
民有所安绝非难事！！哈哈
Act
【在 l****z 的大作中提到】
: D.C. Council Approves Tax to Aid Health Exchange
: Proposal to Fund Insurance Exchange Starting Next Year
:
: By
: Louise Radnofsky
: May 6, 2014 8:25 p.m. ET
: The city council of Washington, D.C., voted Tuesday to allow a tax on all
: health insurers selling inside the district to fund its Affordable Care Act
: insurance marketplace.
: The plan, submitted by the city's DC Health Link insurance exchange, gives
| a*********a
发帖数: 3656 | 4 LMAO.
【在 b*x 的大作中提到】
: 转THR
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