Credit Extension (Editorial)

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We applaud Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders for pressuring Arkansas’ largest insurers to drop their rate increases for next year’s Individual Marketplace plans. Still, an average 22% year-over-year increase is painful.

Across the board, insurance companies are reporting inflating medical costs and a population that is less healthy and in need of more complex care to manage chronic disease.

Solutions to those issues are complex and take time.

However, Congress will commit an unforced error if it again declines to extend the tax credits for Marketplace plan enrollees. The credits, part of the Affordable Care Act and enhanced through the American Rescue Plan Act, prompted Marketplace enrollment to more than double. This increased the number of insured Americans and improved the risk pool because these new enrollees trended younger and healthier.

Now the tax credits will expire at the end of the year without congressional action, and healthier folks will be the first to drop out, leaving the risk pools riskier and more Americans uninsured.

We’re already seeing the impact on premiums. Not only is the federal government’s share going down with the tax credits’ expiration, gross premiums are also increasing due to the degrading quality of the risk pool.

Shutdown politics or not, the credits ought to be continued.