{"id":11804,"date":"2017-06-21T16:52:00","date_gmt":"2017-06-21T16:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/2017\/06\/21\/ceos-say-theyll-sell-health-insurance-next-year-but-are-flying-blind\/"},"modified":"2017-06-21T16:52:00","modified_gmt":"2017-06-21T16:52:00","slug":"ceos-say-theyll-sell-health-insurance-next-year-but-are-flying-blind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/ceos-say-theyll-sell-health-insurance-next-year-but-are-flying-blind\/","title":{"rendered":"CEOs Say They'll Sell Health Insurance Next Year, But Are Flying Blind"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Alison Kodjak<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n Mario Schlosser, CEO of the startup Oscar Health, says he’s optimistic that Congress will come up with a humane health care bill.<\/p>\n

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Noam Galai\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

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Noam Galai\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

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The Senate vote on a bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act is, according to conventional wisdom, one week away.<\/p>\n

And we still don’t know<\/a> what’s in the bill.<\/p>\n

Not having concrete information is deeply uncomfortable for a journalist like me.<\/p>\n

But for lots of people, like those who work in the insurance industry, not knowing what’s in that bill is a bigger deal. Wednesday is a deadline of sorts for these companies. If they want to sell policies next year in states that use the federal health exchange on Healthcare.gov<\/a>, they have to let Health and Human Services know their intentions.<\/p>\n

How are they dealing?<\/p>\n

I reached out to a couple of insurance executives and asked.<\/p>\n

Mario Schlosser<\/a> is CEO of Oscar<\/a>, the insurance startup that’s betting hard on the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.<\/p>\n

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Wednesday morning, Oscar announced<\/a> it’s going to keep selling individual insurance in New York in 2018, and expanding its offerings in five states \u2013 New Jersey, Ohio, California, Florida and Tennessee.<\/p>\n

It’s a bold move, considering Congress is right now considering dismantling the Affordable Care Act markets and changing the rules governing health insurance.<\/p>\n

“When the dust settles, the individual market will be stable, and we want to be part of getting it there,” Schlosser told me.<\/p>\n

He agreed with President Trump that the American Health Care Act<\/a>, passed by the House in May, is “mean.”<\/p>\n

“I think that bill was mean and I think that bill would lead to loss of coverage that would be bad for pretty much everybody in the system,” he said.<\/p>\n