The Trump administration has decided to resume a program intended to prop up Obamacare insurers after taking heat for pausing the program.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released a regulation late Tuesday that will resume payments under the risk adjustment program. Insurers had complained that the pause could cause further destabilization of Obamacare’s insurance marketplaces.
Risk adjustment is intended to help share risk among Obamacare’s insurers on the individual market, which is used by people who don’t get insurance through a job or the government. An insurer who earns a certain amount of profits must pay into the program and an insurer with a certain threshold of losses gets funding from it.
CMS paused the payments under the program earlier this month due to a court ruling back in February that found the formula used to calculate the payments was flawed. Some insurers howled that any uncertainty surrounding the payments could force them to raise premiums.
The final rule allows Health and Human Services to continue to collect and make payments for the 2017 benefit year.
The regulation includes additional explanation surrounding the formula in an effort to satisfy the federal judge’s ruling
