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Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) is asking the Obama administration for answers on the situation facing 22,000 Ohioans enrolled in an ObamaCare co-op insurance plan that is going out of business. Portman wrote to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on Thursday, asking for action to protect the enrollees. (Sullivan, 6/16)

Last month the nonprofit co-op InHealth announced that it would be liquidated and taken over by the state. It provided health coverage to about 22,000 state residents. In his letter, Portman said those enrollees now must choose between getting new insurance and starting over paying a new deductible, or paying the tax penalty for not having health insurance. Those enrollees “were encouraged by the administration to enroll in the Obamacare marketplace in the first place. Now they have to find new insurance or risk paying a penalty to the IRS. Worse, many of them have already paid high deductibles for their CO-OP coverage, yet they are about to lose credit for those payments and incur more out-of-pocket costs if they chose a new insurance plan mid-year,” Portman wrote. “That’s just not fair, and the administration owes these Ohio families a solution to a problem it created.” (Owens, 6/16)

It wasn't a matter of if, but more like how much. Health care analysts and actuaries have been predicting for weeks now that Affordable Care Act exchange members would likely see premium increases for 2017 around 10 percent on average. Preliminary reporting shows those predictions are accurate. (Konrad, 6/16)

The Covered California board Thursday approved a $320 million budget for 2017 that adds money for marketing, website upgrades and outreach to disadvantaged communities. The state health exchange’s budget adds $2 million to boost marketing in Asian languages. It also earmarks $7.25 million for the exchange’s Navigator program, in which community organizations across the state help underserved groups sign up for coverage. That’s a cut of $2.75 million from this year. (Ibarra, 6/17)