Obamacare Is Pretty Stable — Unless Republicans Cripple It

The CSR subsidies that President Trump keeps threatening to kill are pretty important:

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina seeks 22.9% rate increase on 2018 ACA plans – would be 8.8% if cost-sharing payments guaranteed

— Anna Mathews (@annawmathews) May 25, 2017

Here in California, our insurance commissioner has asked all health insurers for two sets of rate hike requests: one that assumes the CSR subsidies continue and one that assumes they don’t. We won’t get the rate requests for several weeks, but I expect that we’ll see the same kind of difference. At a guess, average rate increase requests will be around 6 percent with CSR and 15 percent without.

Just to be crystal clear about this: What this means is that if Republicans stop screwing around with CSR, rate hikes nationwide would probably be in the 5-10 percent range, which is fairly normal. It also shows that the market has started to stabilize after last year’s big increases. The only reason we’re likely to see another year of big increases is because of a deliberate campaign to undermine the Obamacare market by Republicans.