“Elimination of the individual mandate without having a viable replacement would have immediate impacts on the individual market in California. The recently released Congressional Budget Office analysis of the so-called “skinny repeal” under consideration in the U.S. Senate this morning validates independent research that Covered California sponsored on this same issue in 2016.
“The implications for 2018 are stark. The individual insurance market would be far less stable, with about 700,000 fewer Californians with individual coverage. Many of those people would drop coverage not because there is no penalty but because the increase in premiums could be as much as 20 percent more due to a less healthy risk mix. In addition to coverage losses in the individual market, 300,000 Californians would likely not enroll in Medicaid due to the elimination of the individual mandate.
“Removing the mandate would take California backward in terms of the coverage gains achieved over the last four years, leading to renewed increases in uncompensated care that would affect all Californians.
