By Sabrina Corlette and Kevin Lucia

Among the Trump administration’s first promises was to give states more flexibility and control over their health insurance markets than they had had during the Obama years. To date, however, the administration has offered states only uncertainty about what to expect in 2018, which has made it difficult to set premium rates. In particular, state officials are struggling to keep their insurance markets afloat in the face of the Trump administration’s continued indecision over whether to reimburse insurance companies for Affordable Care Act (ACA) cost-sharing reduction (CSR) plans. And time is running out.

In their latest blog post for The Commonwealth Fund, CHIR’s Sabrina Corlette and Kevin Lucia describe the different directives that state insurance departments have given to insurers about 2018 premium rates, and how those directives are likely to affect consumers, insurers, and federal taxpayers. You can read the full blog post here.