Carriers without products for sale through DC Health Link have no interest in paying fees to support it.
Insurers and their trade groups are trying to keep the body in charge of the exchange, the D.C. Health Benefit Exchange Authority, from using a broad-based “health carrier assessment” to support it.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act requires managers of locally based exchanges to come up with their own revenue by 2015.
Only four carriers sell coverage through the D.C. exchange, and the district has a small market.
D.C. exchange managers proposed making up for those limitations by having a wide range of carriers – including issuers of dental, vision, critical illness, and other products not sold through the exchange – join the others in paying user fees.
Wes Rivers, a policy analyst at the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, wrote a comment letter supporting the proposal.
Even though carriers issuing disability insurance, long-term care insurance and other “excepted products” cannot sell the products through the exchange, PPACA will help them by helping more D.C. residents get medical coverage, Rivers writes.
Expanded access to coverage should make D.C. residents healthier, and that should eventually make the residents better risks for non-medical, health-related products, Rivers says.