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While all eyes were on Republican senators this month as they launched a last-ditch effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act by a simple majority, the deadline for health insurers to lock in their 2018 rates in the individual insurance exchanges slowly approached. That deadline arrives Wednesday, when insurers must sign contracts to sell coverage in the ACA marketplace next year without knowing whether the Trump administration will continue paying subsidies that help lower the cost of coverage for low-income Americans or whether the administration will keep enforcing the individual mandate that requires most people to buy insurance. (Livingston, 9/26)

While that last-ditch Obamacare repeal push floundered Tuesday, there is little residual momentum among Republicans who supported the stabilization bill to resume negotiations with Democrats. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who spearheaded the bipartisan effort with ranking member Patty Murray (D-Wash.), blamed both sides for killing momentum on a bipartisan fix: Republicans for resuming their Obamacare repeal push and some Democrats for rallying behind a single-payer health care proposal. (Reid, 9/26)

In the same day Republicans gave up on their latest attempt to repeal Obamacare, Florida insurance regulators projected that premiums for those on the plan could go up by nearly 45 percent next year. But consumers who receive subsidies will be mostly shielded from the rate hikes. (Miller, 9/26)

Florida regulators said most of the average rate hike — 31 percentage points — came from standard plans sold on the ACA exchange at healthcare.gov. Insurers raised rates for those plans due to the political uncertainty that has plagued the healthcare debate, specifically whether the Trump administration will stop paying subsidies that lower out-of-pocket costs for low-income Americans. (Chang, 9/26)

Despite continuing uncertainty over the fate of the Affordable Care Act, Independence Blue Cross chief executive Daniel J. Hilferty said Tuesday that the Philadelphia region’s largest health insurer will offer Affordable Care Act plans in Southeastern Pennsylvania and in New Jersey for next year. “We just feel that we can’t not be there for 200,000-plus people in the five-county area and 100,000 people in New Jersey,” said Hilferty, who made the decision Monday, before Senate Republicans dropped their latest effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act. (Brubaker, 9/27)

Also, while many health insurers stopped selling individual policies on several state exchanges because of the uncertain path of the Affordable Care Act, Oscar has taken a bet on the future of the embattled health care law, informally known as Obamacare. In 2018, the start-up plans to expand its existing footprint in New York, California and Texas; re-enter New Jersey, which Oscar left this year; partner with the renowned Cleveland Clinic in Ohio; and join forces with Humana health insurance to sell plans in Nashville. ... While [Oscar's founder Mario Schlosser] declined to comment in detail about future expansion plans, he confirmed that Atlanta is on Oscar’s radar. (Ridderbusch, 9/26)