Wall Street Journal Turns to Joel Ario on ACA Effects on Individual Insurance Market
"Outspoken Group Bears Brunt of Cancelled Health-Insurance Policies"
The Wall Street Journal
November 1, 2013 - The Wall Street Journal turned to Manatt's Joel Ario, a managing director with Manatt Health Solutions, for insight into how implementation of the Affordable Care Act is affecting insured individuals whose current plans don't comply with the law's standard.
The Wall Street Journal reports that approximately 10 million people who bought insurance on the individual market and don't qualify for subsidies under the ACA will have their plans cancelled. Their rates are expected to rise, and some are seeing increased rates of 20%.
Ario told The Wall Street Journal that some people will pay more because the law requires that plans meet certain criteria, such as covering maternity and mental-health services. Many individually insured people had foregone such provisions in favor of lower premiums or deductibles. Now, higher premiums paid by younger, healthier people will help the uninsured afford coverage.
Individually insured people "are a transient population affiliated with rugged individualism, entrepreneurialism, but hostile to the government taking away something," said Ario. "But you cannot have an [economically viable] insurance pool by letting people pick and choose."
Read the article here.