With The Federal Individual Mandate Gone, States Might Step Up: Lessons From Massachusetts

This new post by Audrey Morse Gasteier appears on the Health Affairs Blog as part of a series stemming from the Sixth Annual Health Law Year in P/Review event held at Harvard Law School on Tuesday, December 12, 2017.

The effective repeal of the federal individual mandate represents one of the most significant changes to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) since its implementation. Especially on the heels of the federal government’s sudden withdrawal of cost-sharing reduction payments this past October, the instability that the federal mandate repeal could introduce to health insurance markets is material. However, states can craft reaction strategies to protect against such effects.

In Massachusetts, where I manage policy and strategy for the state-run insurance exchange, we’ve now spent a decade administering our own state-based individual mandate. And, while our state is unique in many ways—our experience may prove useful to policy makers in other states considering locally tailored pathways to maintaining coverage gains. State-administered mandates or alternative policies to encourage broad coverage across a state’s population can be a tool to foster premium stability and healthy issuer participation, but we have found that mandates can also introduce extra advantages such as the promotion of consistent benefit floors and enabling effective outreach to the uninsured. […]

Read the full article here!

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff

The Petrie-Flom Center staff often posts updates, announcements, and guests posts on behalf of others.

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