Trump administration to halt another ACA insurer program

How it works: Under risk adjustment, insurers that enroll healthier-than-average people compensate insurers that enroll sicker-than-average people. The end result is supposed to be a zero-sum program that encourages companies to sell health plans to all people regardless of their medical histories.

• Without this compensation mechanism, insurers will have an incentive to avoid enrolling sick people by making plans unattractive to people who have costly diseases.
• Or insurers could decide to bail on the marketplace if they think it's no longer worth the headache.
• Risk adjustment was the only permanent health insurer payment program under the ACA. The other two, risk corridors and reinsurance, lasted three years.

• The federal government was supposed to release a report about the risk adjustment program at the end of June, but it's being held up by litigation from insurers that have argued the program's formula is flawed.

Flashback: The Trump administration similarly undermined ACA insurer payments last year when it stopped paying insurers subsidies that helped low-income people in the ACA marketplaces with their deductibles and out-of-pocket costs.