The Trump administration may suspend a permanent Affordable Care Act program that prevents health insurance companies from cherry-picking healthy people in the individual marketplaces, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Why it matters: If the government halts the program, called risk adjustment, at a minimum insurers that were expecting payments would hike ACA premiums to make up for big losses. But it also could "inject chaos and uncertainty into the individual insurance market," according to Larry Levitt of the Kaiser Family Foundation, if insurers decide to quit next year.
If a federal court agrees with the Department of Justice's argument that the Affordable Care Act's rules around pre-existing medical conditions are no longer constitutional, then the Republican states pursuing the lawsuit only want those rules lifted in their states, Inside Health Policy reports.
The bottom line: Legal scholars across the political spectrum have slammed DOJ's position to stop defending the ACA, and the new filing from the plaintiffs "appears to be an effort to prevent further litigation and protest," according to Inside Health Policy.
