Policy expert: President Obama planning ‘backdoor attempt’ to bail out insurers

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President Obama is working on using a special fund to bail out insurers who claim they lost money on the Obamacare exchanges – a plan that bypasses the consent of Congress.

National Review has the commentary:

If it successfully executes this plan, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will have circumvented Congress to secure a taxpayer bailout for insurers — directly contradicting Congress’s intentions as expressed by multiple spending bills, and possibly violating federal law.

Currently, insurers are suing HHS for more than $2.5 billion promised them under ACA’s “risk corridor” program, which was designed to redistribute earnings from more profitable insurers in ACA exchanges to less profitable insurers.

In 2014, insurers requested $2.9 billion in risk-corridor payments to cover their losses, but only $362 million had been paid into the program by profitable insurers, forcing CMS to pay insurers 12 cents on the dollar.

This type of backdoor dealing is exactly the kind of government voters this November rejected. Health-insurance executives should not reap guaranteed profits on insurance premiums that were promised to drop, not increase by 25 percent nationwide. Click here to help Tea Party Patriots urge lawmakers to repeal Obamacare!