Some insurance companies reduce commissions to trim losses

Kaiser Health News published an interesting article recounting some of the travails that insurance companies have been encountering on insurance exchanges. Apparently, even though gold plans cost consumers more, they have proven unprofitable for a number of health insurance companies. The plans have proven so unprofitable that the pool to help mitigate against high-cost patients has been more than depleted, with HHS only having enough to pay 13% of what it owed for 2014. It's unclear to me why the insurance companies can't simply raise premiums to make those plans more profitable. Instead, some health insurance companies are trying to reduce enrollment in the unprofitable plans by not paying commission to brokers when they sign someone up for a gold plan.

Apparently, a number of people signed up for insurance plans outside of the regular enrollment window and some of them have been exiting their insurance plans after expensive treatments. To discourage this practice, some insurance plans are also eliminating commissions for brokers when they sign someone up outside of the regular enrollment window.