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ModelMayhem.com - WH Concedes Healthcare Law Is Unsustainable
After months insisting that could be fixed, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius finally acknowledged Friday she doesn't see how.
"Despite our best analytical efforts, I do not see a viable path forward for CLASS implementation at this time," Sebelius said in a letter to congressional leaders.
The law requiredthe administration to certify that CLASS would remain financially solvent for 75 years before it could be put into place.
But officials said they discovered they could not make CLASS both affordable and financially solvent while keeping it a voluntary program open to virtually all workers, as the law also required.
Monthly premiums would have ranged from $235 to $391, even as high as $3,000 under some scenarios, the administration said. At those prices, healthy people were unlikely to sign up. Suggested changes aimed at discouraging enrollment by people in poor health could have opened the program to court challenges, officials said.
"If healthy purchasers are not attracted ...thenpremiums will increase, which will make it even more unattractiveto purchasers who could also obtain policies in the private market," Kathy Greenlee,the lead official on CLASS, said in a memo to Sebelius. That "would cause the program to quickly collapse."
After months insisting that could be fixed, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius finally acknowledged Friday she doesn't see how.
"Despite our best analytical efforts, I do not see a viable path forward for CLASS implementation at this time," Sebelius said in a letter to congressional leaders.
The law requiredthe administration to certify that CLASS would remain financially solvent for 75 years before it could be put into place.
But officials said they discovered they could not make CLASS both affordable and financially solvent while keeping it a voluntary program open to virtually all workers, as the law also required.
Monthly premiums would have ranged from $235 to $391, even as high as $3,000 under some scenarios, the administration said. At those prices, healthy people were unlikely to sign up. Suggested changes aimed at discouraging enrollment by people in poor health could have opened the program to court challenges, officials said.
"If healthy purchasers are not attracted ...thenpremiums will increase, which will make it even more unattractiveto purchasers who could also obtain policies in the private market," Kathy Greenlee,the lead official on CLASS, said in a memo to Sebelius. That "would cause the program to quickly collapse."