The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced yesterday that it was “pleased” to up its reimbursements to insurance companies to 100 percent for individual health claim costs that fall between $45,000 and $250,000. The original contribution level under the reinsurance provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was 80 percent.
The move is made possible by an abundance of unused funds in the ACA’s reinsurance pool, into which the insurers themselves must contribute. The program is designed to keep a lid of health insurance premiums by “providing payments to health insurance issuers that cover higher cost populations in the individual market.”
The program collected $8.7 billion for the pool in 2014 and paid out $1.2 billion to insurers in the first half of that year. To be eligible, a health plan must be non-grandfathered.
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