Insurance commissioners all over the country are pushing back filing deadlines for enrollment and offering new concessions to insurers to keep them from leaving their state marketplaces amid the uncertainty over the ACA. Insurers want assurances that they will continue to receive cost-sharing reduction payments from the federal government, totaling about $7 billion this year, but the Trump administration has made no such promises. A new Kaiser Family Foundation brief outlines options for state insurance markets and challenges that states could face under the AHCA. Insurers face a June 21 deadline to tell the federal government whether they’ll participate in Obamacare in 2018. Insurers are at a loss for what to plan for, as demonstrated in their filings.

The biggest fear among insurance commissioners is having every carrier pull out of a state marketplace, leaving residents with no ACA plans to buy. In Washington, the insurers just submitted their bids for 2018 Healthplanfinder coverage, and two counties had no bidders – Grays Harbor and Klickitat. See Governor Inslee’s “Statement on GOP efforts to sabotage and destabilize health insurance markets” and similar concerns from Insurance Commissioner Kreidler’s and Washington Health Benefit Exchange CEO Pam MacEwan.