Health Payer Intelligence quoted Manatt’s Joel Ario, a managing director with Manatt Health, for an article about the various clauses of the Affordable Care Act that have brought obstacles for insurers to overcome.
One of the clauses, the individual mandate, requires eligible citizens to purchase healthcare coverage or else risk a tax penalty. Due to the high cost of insurance coverage through the exchange, many young adults are opting to pay the tax penalty instead. Payers are now facing financial losses due to the older and more expensive populations they’re serving on the health insurance exchanges.
“It could be better if there was broader enrollment, and that is primarily what insurers want to see,” Ario told HealthPayerIntelligence.com. “The second challenge is to make sure that as many people as possible are continuously enrolled in the program, so that payers do not have people coming in and out of the program. These are shared goals between insurers and the Obama administration.”