After announcing that it would stop paying risk-adjustment payments to insurance companies with plans on the individual market on July 7, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services reversed course two weeks later and said it would indeed continue making the payments.

The risk-adjustment program tries to balance the medical risk in the Affordable Care Act’s insurance markets. Health insurers that are found to have healthier customers (according to a federal formula) pay money into the program, and then insurers who have sicker customers receive money out of it.Read More