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The Trump administration will allow insurers and consumers to extend for an additional year individual and small-group health plans that do not comply with the Affordable Care Act's coverage rules. The insurance industry lobbied for the grandmothering extension. But some experts say it will hurt efforts to stabilize the individual market and moderate rate hikes by letting healthier people stay in plans outside the ACA-regulated insurance pool...It's estimated that fewer than one million people currently remain in grandmothered individual-market plans in the three dozen or so states that still allow them. The rest of the states, including California and New York, already halted the sale of non-ACA compliant plans to strengthen their ACA-regulated markets. (Meyer, 2/23)

If the Trump Administration and Congress repeal the Affordable Care Act, they ought to first fix the marketplace for individuals and put off the contentious debate of Medicaid reform for many months, two leading health association presidents said Thursday. Speaking at a Nashville Health Care Council luncheon, American Hospital Association President Rick Pollack and Marilyn Tavenner, president of the America's Health Insurance Plans, agreed that the individual insurance market was unstable before the ACA and it remains so. Of the millions of newly insured on the exchanges, 70% are receiving subsidies to be able to afford coverage, Tavenner said. (Barkholz, 2/23)