The Trump administration has shot down Idaho’s bid to sell plans on Obamacare insurer exchanges that don’t comply with the law’s quality requirements.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services responded on Thursday that Idaho cannot sell plans that violate the law’s requirements that plans sold on the exchanges meet quality requirements including covering essential health benefits and not charge sick people more money.
“CMS is committed to working with states to give them as much flexibility as permissible under the law to provide their citizens the best possible access to healthcare,” CMS Administrator Seema Verma said in a statement. “However, the Affordable Care Act remains the law.”
CMS said that it believed that Idaho’s plan would be “failing to substantially enforce” federal law.
It remains unclear if Idaho plans to challenge the denial in court.
The state’s insurance commissioner Dean Cameron told the Washington Examiner that he didn’t see the letter from Verma as an outright denial.
“We do not read the letter as a conclusion nor a decision,” he said.
Cameron recently told the Washington Examiner that would be an option if CMS denies its application.
