Exposed: Obama Admin Caught Making Illegal Move That Makes Obamacare Look Even Worse

By Randy DeSoto. The Obama administration has been caught — once again — seeking to circumvent the law related to Obamacare by diverting billions in funds intended for the U.S. Treasury to cover private insurance companies’ losses.

In 2014, Sen. Marco Rubio inserted language into the omnibus spending bill which specifically barred the Department of Health and Human Services from dipping into the general funds of the Treasury to bailout failing insurance companies, the Washington Post reported.

Marc Thiessen, writing for the Post, observed that the provision is “quietly killing” Obamacare, while the New York Times headlined in December, “Marco Rubio Quietly Undermines Affordable Care Act.” The Hill called the provision, “the biggest blow in the GOP’s five-year war against Obamacare.”

Both the Post and the Times pointed out that private insurers have been taking heavy losses participating in the healthcare exchanges, and to entice them to stay, the Obama administration had been subsidizing the companies with taxpayer dollars.

According to the Times, in 2014 “insurers lost $2.9 billion more than expected on Obamacare…Thanks to Rubio’s provision, the administration was allowed to pay only 13 cents of every dollar insurers requested. Without the taxpayer bailouts, more than half of the Obamacare insurance cooperatives created under the law failed.”

Several insurers have pulled out of the remaining exchanges. United Healthcare and Aetna, two of the nation’s largest providers, have indicated they are considering pulling out of Obamacare altogether, due to the billions in losses they have sustained. (Read more from “Exposed: Obama Admin Caught Making Illegal Move That Makes Obamacare Look Even Worse” HERE)

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Surviving Obamacare Co-Ops Facing Failure

By Richard Pollock. Eight of the 11 remaining Obamacare health insurance co-ops are in serious financial trouble and could collapse by the end of the year, Mandy Cohen, a top federal health official told Congress Thursday in testimony before a House oversight panel.

Cohen, the chief operating officer for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, generally stonewalled the House Oversight Subcommittee on Health Care, Benefits and Administrative Rules during a hearing focused on the status of the surviving Obamacare health insurance co-ops and the additional costs taxpayers could face in the event of more failures.

Twenty three of the non-profit co-ops were established under Obamacare in 2012 to compete with commercial for-profit insurance companies. But so far half — or 12 — have closed their doors after only two years of operation. A thirteenth co-op in Vermont was never licensed to operate.

Cohen stubbornly refused to disclose which of the remaining 11 are struggling, but conceded that eight now face either federal “enhanced oversight” or are operating under a federal “corrective action plan.”

Cohen refused to guarantee any of the three co-ops not presently operating under a corrective plan would survive the year. “Too early to tell in the year,” Cohen said. “As new information comes up, if we need to, we will put more folks up on corrective action plans.” (Read more from “Surviving Obamacare Co-Ops Facing Failure” HERE)

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