Court delay sought in $7B Obamacare subsidy case
Breaking Legal News
Uncertainty over the future of health care for millions grew deeper Monday as insurers released a blueprint for stabilizing wobbly markets and the Trump administration left in limbo billions of dollars in federal payments.
At the federal courthouse, the administration and House Republicans asked appeals judges for a 90-day extension in a case that involves federal payments to reduce deductibles and copayments for people with modest incomes who buy their own policies. The fate of $7 billion in “cost-sharing subsidies” remains under a cloud as insurers finalize their premium requests for next year.
The court case is known as House v. Price. In requesting the extension, lawyers for the Trump administration and the House said the parties are continuing to work on measures, “including potential legislative action,” to resolve the issue. Requests for extensions are usually granted routinely.
Hours before the filing, a major insurer group released a framework for market stability that relies in part on a continuation of such subsidies.
The BlueCross BlueShield Association represents plans that are the backbone of insurance markets under the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, and would also be the mainstay with a Republican approach.
As the GOP-led Congress works on rolling back major parts of the Obama law, the BlueCross BlueShield plan called for:
Continued protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions and sustained federal funding to offset the cost of care for the sickest patients.
More leeway for states to experiment with health insurance benefits, with a basic floor of federal standards.
Preserving ACA consumer safeguards including no lifetime caps on benefits, no higher premium for women based on gender, and a requirement that insurers spend a minimum of 80 cents of every premium dollar on medical care.
Related listings
-
Maryland removes Dred Scott ruling author's statue
Breaking Legal News 08/23/2017A statue of the U.S. Supreme Court justice who wrote the 1857 Dred Scott decision that upheld slavery and denied citizenship to African Americans was removed from the grounds of the Maryland State House early Friday.The statue of Roger B. Taney was l...
-
Roman Polanski sex victim to appear in court for first time
Breaking Legal News 07/23/2017The victim of Roman Polanski's sex assault 40 years ago is going to appeal directly to a judge to end the long-running case against the fugitive director, his lawyer said Thursday.Samantha Geimer, 13 at the time of the crime, has long supported Polan...
-
West Virginia high court excludes inmates from workers' comp
Breaking Legal News 07/15/2017Inmates participating in work-release programs do not quality for workers' compensation benefits, the West Virginia Supreme Court ruled has ruled.The court on Thursday unanimously affirmed a Workers' Compensation Board of Review's 2015 decision to no...
USCIS to Begin Accepting Applications under the International Entrepreneur Rule
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today it is taking steps to implement the International Entrepreneur Rule (IER), in accordance with a recent court decision.
Although the IER was published during the previous administration with an effective date of July 17, 2017, it did not take effect because the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a final rule on July 11, 2017, delaying the IER’s effective date until March 14, 2018. This delay rule was meant to give USCIS time to review the IER and, if necessary, to issue a rule proposing to remove the IER program regulations.
However, a Dec. 1, 2017, ruling from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in National Venture Capital Association v. Duke vacated USCIS’ final rule to delay the effective date. The Dec. 1, 2017, court decision is a result of litigation filed in district court on Sept. 19, 2017, which challenged the delay rule.