for not purchasing ACA-compliant insurance. Vox talks about it, and this is an explanation:
But there are about 73,000 people in Tennessee who are covered under Farm Bureau plans that aren’t ACA-compliant. About 50,000 of those are grandfathered plans, but the rest are medically underwritten “traditional” plans that are still available for purchase. Medical underwriting means that the insurer uses the applicant’s medical history to determine whether to offer coverage and at what price. That practice is no longer allowed under the ACA — on or off-exchange — for any plans that are considered individual major medical health insurance.
But in Tennessee, the state doesn’t consider Farm Bureau to be a licensed health insurer. That’s been the case for more than two decades — Farm Bureau plans operate outside of the regulatory structure imposed by the state (and the ACA) on health insurers. As a result, Farm Bureau “traditional” plans, which are less expensive than regular health insurance but only available to healthy people, are being sold to healthy people in Tennessee, effectively removing them from the ACA-compliant risk pool.
People who enroll in Farm Bureau’s “traditional” plans are not in compliance with the ACA’s individual mandate, and are assessed a penalty for being uninsured unless they’re exempt from the individual mandate (this is the same as the rule that requires people with short-term health insurance to pay the individual mandate penalty; just like the Tennessee Farm Bureau “traditional” plans, short-term health insurance is not regulated by the ACA).
But some healthy people find that the combination of the lower premiums and the penalty is still less than the premiums for an ACA-compliant plan. The plans are not as robust as regular health insurance, and aren’t helpful for people with pre-existing conditions. But the fact that Tennessee has allowed them to continue to be sold outside the scope of the state’s insurance regulations could be part of the reason the state has a risk pool in the ACA-compliant market that’s sicker than most states.
Source:
https://www.healthinsurance.org/tennessee-state-health-insurance-exchange/And
some analysts think they'll look for ways to not enforce the mandate penalty.
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