Health insurance actuaries are getting a rare moment in the spotlight as Republicans in Congress focus on a relatively obscure provision of the health care reform law. That provision, the Affordable Care Acts risk corridor premium stabilization program, is a highly technical program which, in short, limits health insurance plans’ profits and losses. The temporary program (it is set to go away by 2017) works by comparing a plans anticipated claims for a given year to the plans actual claim experience. If the plan experiences higher than expected claims they receive money from the program and if the plan experiences lower than expected claims it pays money into the program. However, if not enough health plans pay into the risk corridor program to offset the payments to the plans receiving funds from the program, the federal government is on the hook for the difference.
It is this potential government subsidy that Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Rep. Tim Griffin of Arkansas, both Republicans, have focused on in separate bills in their respective chambers (S.1726 and H.R. 3541). Only a few days ago House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, a Republican of Wisconsin, said that Republicans may push to repeal this program as part of the negotiations over raising the debt ceiling. However, as we now know, the debt ceiling bill was passed by the House with no such provision in it and word on Capitol Hill is that neither Rubios nor Griffins bill have much of a chance of making it out of committee, let alone to vote their respective chambers.
