An executive order suggested that you may undermine incentives for healthy people to buy insurance,
and your department pulled advertisements encouraging people to sign up.
They funded advertising to bring people into the market, made frequent updates to their website to make it easier to use,
and provided grants to outside groups that helped people sign up for coverage.
Pulling back on any of these functions could make it harder for eligible people to find out about Obamacare options
and harder for them to find the right plan for their needs.
Anthem says it is likely to break even or make money on individual coverage next year, and Centene assured investors
that it was “not backing off at all.” Where they head next will be largely determined by your choices
Eventually, if you do not have some effective way of enticing people to sign up for insurance, you will destroy the market,
said Karen Ignagni, the chief executive of EmblemHealth, who represented the insurers when the law was first drafted.
Health insurers have long complained that consumer protections in the Affordable Care Act make it too easy
for people to wait until they are sick to sign up and to cancel their plans once they are well again.
Insurers could respond to this change by simply raising their prices, but some will probably respond by exiting the Obamacare markets altogether.
The easiest would be to simply make it easier for people to get exemptions to the policy.
That would also tend to suppress signups among healthy people, and increase the cost of insurance coverage.