Washington — President Donald Trump’s move late Thursday to cut off critical federal payments to health insurers sent shock waves through the health care system on Friday, threatening widespread disruption to markets nationwide and igniting new legal and political battles over the Affordable Care Act.
Caught in the middle are millions of Americans likely to see their insurance premiums shoot higher as the administration intensifies its effort to dismantle the 2010 health care law, often called Obamacare.
Insurers have said that markets in some parts of the country could collapse, leaving many consumers who don’t get insurance on the job with no choices for health plans. And state insurance regulators predicted premiums in the individual market nationally would rise by 12 percent to 15 percent next year because of the cutoff.
In New Hampshire, the Democratic leadership in the Legislature on Friday called on Republican Gov. Chris Sununu to protect residents from possible rate increases.
State House and Senate leaders issued a joint statement demanding that Sununu and the Republican-controlled legislature pass a reinsurance program so residents whose premiums go up can get some relief.
They also are calling on state Attorney General Gordon MacDonald to sue the Trump administration to protect the payments the federal government sends to insurance companies to offset the costs of deductibles and copays of low-income residents insured through state marketplaces created under the Affordable Care Act.
Meanwhile, in Vermont, State health care officials scrambled on Friday to understand the full ramifications to end subsidies that help thousands of Vermonters afford health insurance, but in the short term, the decision will not affect the insurance people receive through the state’s online health insurance exchange, said Cory Gustafson, commissioner of the Department of Vermont Health Access, which oversees the state’s publicly funded health insurance programs.
But it will mean diminished care or greater costs for people who take advantage of the subsidies to help pay for their health insurance, he said.
“In the long term, there’s definitely going to be an adjustment because there is just less money coming in to pay for that health care,” Gustafson said on Friday. “That money has to come from somewhere.”
About 12,000 Vermonters are covered through the enhanced silver plan purchased through the state’s health insurance portal, Vermont Health Connect. In 2016, the state received about $12 million from the federal government to help qualified Vermonters lower their out-of-pocket medical costs.
The move to cut off the money, known as cost-sharing reduction payments, came after months of indecision by the administration on the issue.
It marked a sharp shift by Trump to a hard-line approach on health care after a brief period in which the administration had sent mixed signals on whether it might cooperate with bipartisan efforts in Congress to strengthen the Obamacare markets, rather than upend them.
— Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.