[V]ermont is one of more than a dozen states suing President Donald Trump over his decision to cut off federal health insurance subsidies designed to help low-income sick people.
Attorney General TJ Donovan announced Vermont would be part of the lawsuit in a press release on Monday, just days after Trump announced he would no longer send federal subsidy money to health insurance companies.
The other states participating are California, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Oregon, North Carolina, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, Minnesota, New Mexico, Iowa, and Washington, plus the District of Columbia.
Trump has announced he will cut off federal funding to a program called cost-sharing reduction, in which low-income people who use Obamacare exchanges such as Vermont Health Connect are able to pay low premiums for plans that also have low out-of-pocket costs.
In Vermont, as many as 13,000 people using Vermont Health Connect receive federal cost-sharing reduction subsidies, according to the Department of Vermont Health Access. Their income levels range between $17,000 and $30,000 for individuals and $34,000 and $62,000 for a family of four.
About $12 million comes to Vermont insurance companies for cost-sharing reductions, according to the Department of Vermont Health Access. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont, which insures most of the exchange customers, gets around $8.7 million to provide low-cost plans to about 10,000 people. MVP Health Care insures the rest.
The federal cost-sharing reduction subsidies are a key part of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, that help low-income families afford commercial health insurance when they make too much to qualify for a fully subsidized Medicaid plan.
The federal government funds the program by sending checks directly to insurance companies, but Trump said Friday those payments would stop. The multistate lawsuit says Trump’s decision does not follow federal administrative law and asks a judge to require the payments to continue.
“There’s got to be some sort of process here,” Donovan said in an interview. “You just can’t say one day, ‘We’re going to stop making these payments from the federal government.’ That would be too arbitrary. It comes down to process.”
Donovan said he decided to join the lawsuit because vulnerable people will lose access to health care without affordable insurance. He said health insurance prices would also go up for people not using cost-sharing reduction.
“Access to affordable health (insurance) is tantamount to having access to care, and if people can’t afford health care insurance, they’re not going to go to the doctor, go to the hospital, and my concern is that you’re going to have less care being provided to the most vulnerable,” Donovan said.
“We know the cost of health care is going up,” he said. “I think this is going to exacerbate that cost because you’re taking away those subsidies for the most vulnerable, and somebody’s got to pick up the tab.”
Meanwhile, an announcement Tuesday indicated there is bipartisan interest in Congress in continuing the cost-sharing reduction for the time being.
Sens. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., announced they had reached a deal on a measure to stabilize the insurance markets. The proposal would include extending the subsidies for two years.
Speaking on the Senate floor, Alexander said he wanted to “undersell” the proposal but added that it is important to stabilize the markets where Americans who aren’t insured through work can buy coverage.
“The best course is to take this limited bipartisan first step that would avoid the chaos that could occur during 2018 and 2019 if premiums continue to skyrocket and millions of Americans find themselves without a way to purchase health insurance,” Alexander said.
(VTDigger’s Elizabeth Hewitt contributed reporting from Washington, D.C.)
