HEALTHCARE/OBAMACARE(ACA): “Health insurer CareSource will offer Affordable Care Act exchange plans in Ohio’s Paulding County, leaving no place in the U.S. currently known to be at risk of lacking marketplace offerings under the law next year.
The decision by CareSource, a nonprofit that focuses largely on Medicaid, caps a triumph for state regulators around the country, who have fought hard to fill potential bare patches in their coverage maps after insurers announced pullbacks over the past several months amid uncertainty about the law’s future.
As many as 82 counties in states such as Tennessee, Nevada, Indiana, Missouri, Wisconsin and Washington had appeared at risk of lacking any exchange coverage in 2018 after expected withdrawals by insurers, according to a tally by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
CareSource’s chief executive, Pamela Morris, said the decision ‘was the right thing to do as a mission-driven company.’ CareSource was able to agree to offer exchange plans in Paulding County because it has a presence in a neighboring county in the adjacent state of Indiana and thus has a network of health-care providers there. Ms. Morris said CareSource, which offers exchange plans in four states, was ‘fully committed’ to those marketplaces, despite uncertainty about federal decisions related to the health-law marketplaces.”
-Anna Wilde Mathews, “All U.S. Counties to Have an ACA Plan After Ohio Plugs Last Gap,” The Wall Street Journal online, Aug. 24, 2017 01:12pm