High Risk Pool Fact Sheet

Lawmakers seeking to replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are contemplating creating high-risk pools. High-risk pools lack a track record of success despite being tested many times over, by a variety of states and in the early stages of implementation of the ACA. The evidence from those experiments is clear: high-risk pools do not work, and have historically resulted in very high premiums and onerous terms for the coverage that fail to provide the care consumers need.

Lawmakers seeking to replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) are contemplating creating high-risk pools. Unlike under the ACA, in which healthy and less well consumers are insured in the same groups, this approach would establish a group that includes only those consumers with preexisting conditions. High-risk pools lack a track record of success despite being tested many times over, by a variety of states and in the early stages of implementation of the ACA. The evidence from those experiments is clear: high-risk pools do not work, and have historically resulted in very high premiums and onerous terms for the coverage that fail to provide the care consumers need.