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As health insurers weigh their commitments to the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges for 2018, they point to a key issue that will affect the rates they would charge and indeed whether they will participate at all: Federal subsidies known as cost-sharing reduction payments. Those payments are likely to be a major focus as the industry pushes Congress to pass legislation aimed at stabilizing the exchanges. (Mathews, 7/28)

For months, Mr. Trump has threatened to stop reimbursements to insurance companies—a part of the ACA—but his administration has always paid them in the end, including amid significant uncertainty in June and at a crucial moment in GOP negotiations just a week ago in July. The next set of payments, which total millions of dollars for insurers that have lowered deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs for the poorest enrollees in coverage under the law also known as Obamacare, is due in three weeks. (Radnosfky, 7/29)

A pair of prominent lawmakers urged President Trump on Sunday not to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, in the wake of failed Republican efforts to scrap his predecessor’s signature legislative achievement. But Trump urged GOP senators to try again to push through some version of repealing and replacing the law, even though Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said last week it was time to move on to other matters. (King, 7/30)

Sen. Susan Collins, one of three Republican senators who blocked the GOP’s health-care bill last week, on Sunday said President Donald Trump’s threatened cuts in payments to insurers would be “detrimental” to America’s poor. The secretary of health and human services, meanwhile, was noncommittal about the payments and also declined to say whether the Trump administration would enforce the portion of the Affordable Care Act that generally requires individuals to carry health insurance. (Burton, 7/30)

“It would not affect my vote on healthcare, but it’s an example of why we need to act: to make sure that those payments, which are not an insurance company bailout, but rather help people who are very low-income afford their out-of-pocket costs toward their deductibles and their co-pays,” Collins said. “It really would be detrimental to some of the most vulnerable citizens if those payments were cut off.” (Carter, 7/30)

President Trump has said he wants to “let Obamacare implode” as a way to force Democrats to negotiate a deal over replacing the Affordable Care Act. How real is that threat, and how imminent? Here are some key questions and answers. (Lauter and Levey, 7/28)

A pending court decision could force the Trump administration to pump billions of dollars into Obamacare insurers, even as the president threatens to let the health care law “implode.” Health insurers have filed nearly two dozen lawsuits claiming the government owes them payments from a program meant to blunt their losses in the Obamacare marketplaces. That raises the prospect that the Trump administration will have to bankroll a program the GOP has pilloried as an insurer bailout. (Demko, 7/30)

The abrupt collapse of Republicans’ bid to rework the U.S. health-care system opened a new chapter of uncertainty for insurers, medical providers and millions of Americans on Friday, as officials weighed divergent options for the road ahead. Insurers had been anxious about a fallback legislative plan crafted by Republicans that would strip a handful of elements from the 2010 Affordable Care Act they believed were integral—chiefly, the requirement that individuals buy coverage or pay a penalty. By Friday morning, that plan had fallen apart after a surprise defection of Republican senator John McCain. (Radnofsky, Mathews and Hackman, 7/28)

After the failure early Friday of the latest Republican plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act, President Trump said that he wants to “let ObamaCare implode, then deal.” Mr. Trump has already been doing three things to undermine important provisions of the health law, and there is more he could do. (Park and Sanger-Katz, 7/28)

The dramatic collapse of the GOP's efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act have, for now, minimized the threat of significant Medicaid funding cuts. All eyes now turn to what the Trump administration and Congress will do about a shaky individual insurance market. (7/28)

With Republican efforts to dismantle Obamacare in disarray, hundreds of U.S. counties are at risk of losing access to private health coverage in 2018 as insurers consider pulling out of those markets in the coming months. Republican senators failed this week to repeal and replace Obamacare, former President Barack Obama's signature healthcare reform law, creating new uncertainty over how the program providing health benefits to 20 million Americans will be funded and managed in 2018. (Humer, 7/28)

People who buy health insurance on their own are about to experience what’s become a dreary summer ritual — the first look at next year’s premiums. The state Commerce Department on Monday is scheduled to release preliminary rate requests from health insurers for the roughly 170,000 people who buy individual policies. (Snowbeck, 7/30)