Benefits industry insiders say the effects of two contradictory court rulings Tuesday on subsidies under PPACA could have a long-term and possibly disastrous effect on the law, but theyre also not counting on it happening quite yet.
We talk about [consumerism] over and over and over, and nothing seems to happen with it, said Ann Mond Johnson, chair of benefits platform ConnectedHealth. But youve got to keep being optimistic.
Navigators and assisters helped a lot of consumers and were key to 8 million signups during PPACA's first open enrollment period. But the navigator program wasnt without its challenges.
Excluding broker commissions from the medical loss ratio would have slashed the more than $1.6 billion in carrier rebates to consumers in 2011 and 2012 by about 75 percent.