Article snippet: Senate Republicans made only one big change in a new version of their Senate health bill released Monday: They added a penalty for Americans who let their insurance lapse for 63 days or more. Under the new provision, those who go without insurance will be locked out of getting coverage for at least six months after they sign up. The idea is to placate insurers who were alarmed when the bill was released on Thursday without any means to nudge people into the market. This “lockout period” would, in theory, create an incentive for people to have insurance all the time, instead of waiting to sign up when they become ill. But it’s not clear how effective this will really be. “I’m not sure it encourages people to enroll sooner,” said Cori Uccello, a senior health fellow at the American Academy of Actuaries. This is the sort of policy that actuaries think about a lot because they need to determine how policy changes will affect the cost of providing insurance coverage. A range of health economists expressed skepticism that the policy would have a big effect. The most enthusiastic was Joseph Antos, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, who described it as “a better incentive to stay in coverage.” Others tended to think it would have only a marginal effect on who kept and who dropped insurance. Insurers, however, seem warm to the idea. Wellmark, a large plan, has publicly endorsed such a lockout period. The Affordable Care Act, of course, tried to n... Link to the full article to read more