Hospital groups highlight the importance of cost-sharing subsidies in ACA case

Ending the Affordable Care Act’s cost-sharing subsidies would harm patients’ finances and health, trigger a “death spiral” in the health insurance exchanges, and force hospitals to shoulder an even greater financial burden, making it harder for them to serve their communities, the AHA, Federation of American Hospitals, The Catholic Health Association of the United States, and Association of American Medical Colleges said today in a friend-of-the-court brief filed in House v. Burwell. “All of that suggests that the District Court’s reading of the Affordable Care Act may not be the right one,” the brief states, stressing that cost-sharing reductions “prevent out-of-pocket costs from putting health care out of reach for lower-income Americans that dutifully pay their premiums each month.”