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The federal government will choose health plans for hundreds of thousands of consumers whose insurers have left the Affordable Care Act marketplace unless those people opt out of the law’s exchanges or select plans on their own, under a new policy to make sure consumers maintain coverage in 2017. “Urgent: Your health coverage is at risk,” declares a sample “discontinuation notice,” drafted by the government for use by insurers. It tells consumers that “if you don’t enroll in a plan on your own, you may be automatically enrolled in the plan picked for you.” (Pear, 10/8)

A House Republican is circulating a letter among his colleagues urging Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to sue the Obama administration to prevent millions of dollars in legal settlements with ObamaCare insurers. The letter from Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) says a lawsuit should be initiated to prevent a potential payout from an obscure legal fund at the Treasury Department. (Sullivan, 10/7)

Tennessee’s largest insurer, BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, announced in late September that it would significantly limit its participation in the Affordable Care Act exchanges. BlueCross will no longer offer individual plans in the Nashville, Memphis and Knoxville regions. The departure encompasses 30 counties with 100,000 consumers expected to be affected. The move is not a total surprise. BlueCross shared in August that it was reevaluating its strategy for selling to individuals and families. Though the company was allowed to raise its 2017 premiums by 62 percent — one of the largest increases in the country — BlueCross couched the approval in uncertainty. (Tolbert, 10/9)

Covered California’s big 2017 rate hikes are starting to hit home for consumers. The state health insurance exchange began mailing notices to its 1.3 million customers on Wednesday, alerting them that they can determine exactly how much the premiums for their current plans will rise in 2017, and begin shopping around for cheaper options. (Bazar, 10/7)

As Texas' largest insurer eliminated hundreds of thousands of coverage plans for some of the state's sickest patients and asked for double-digit rate increases last year, its Chicago-based nonprofit parent company rewarded 10 top executives with a combined $48 million in bonuses. Patricia Hemingway Hall, the now-retired CEO at Health Care Service Corp., the largest customer-owned insurer in the nation with Blue Cross and Blue Shield divisions in five states including Texas, earned the most. Her $16.57 million pay included a $14.9 million bonus, according to 2015 compensation records obtained from the Illinois Department of Insurance. (Deam, 10/8)

About 10 million Americans buy individual insurance coverage without cost-reducing federal subsidies on the marketplaces on the open market, according to the Congressional Budget Office... While consumers have faced sticker shock, the insurers have faced what might be called "sicker shock." They are raising premiums after finding that many of the customers buying plans on the individual market were sicker and more costly to insure than expected when the health law was implemented. (Anderson, 10/7)