Posted on 10/02/2014 7:39:05 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
It didn't get much attention outside Capitol Hill, but late last week House Republican leaders scuttled a vote to repeal an ObamaCare bailout plan for major heath insurance companies if they lose money on new Affordable Care Act policies.
Taxpayers could be on the hook for billions of dollars of payouts for ACA insurance policies that incur losses that exceed premiums collected.
Despite pleas from conservatives to hold a vote to repeal the sham subsidy program to the biggest insurers — like Aetna (NYSE:AET), Cigna (NYSE:CI) and Humana (NYSE:HUM) — our sources tell us the House leadership reportedly said that it "ran out of time to hold a roll call vote."
Conservative activists are complaining that the real motive for killing a vote was to avoid ruffling the feathers of the health insurance lobby by ending the ObamaCare insurance industry safety net.
Conservative lawmakers also fear that in the anticipated lame-duck session in December, Republicans will allow the Obama administration a de facto blank check to make payments to insurance companies that lose money on ObamaCare policies without congressional approval.
'Strong Incentive'
The bailout measure is the Affordable Care Act's controversial "risk corridor" program, which provides financial "protection" against losses to insurers that sponsor exchange plans. The idea of this short-term program was to create a pool of funds from the profits of some insurers with ObamaCare plans to offset the losses of others.
A 2013 analysis by the Society of Actuaries says that the risk corridors program "provides a strong incentive for insurers to participate in the health insurance exchanges set up by the Affordable Care Act." Perhaps too strong an incentive, budget experts worry.
Under the program, if "allowable costs" to an insurer top 103% of the "target amount," the feds subsidize half of those excess payments.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
My money is on the insurance companies turning a profit AND getting a bail out. They are THAT good.
It is important to note that the payments cannot actually be made unless Congress appropriates the money. The original ACA did not authorize any funding.
Here we have people worrying about billions of dollars like it’s real money or something.
It is important to note that the payments cannot actually be made unless Congress appropriates the money. The original ACA did not authorize any funding.
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I saw that in an article yesterday .... unfortunately, you know the Repukes will cave and vote the money.
If we bail out the insurance companies then we have a de-facto single payer program. The insurance companies are essentially reduced to well paid administrators of the government directed program and premiums are actually just taxes.
I think this will be an even bigger bailout than before. Obamacare is a failed ideological concept. It sounded nice in liberally lalaland but as we all know liberals lack the ability to understand reality and common sense. I think they are this way due to a lack of experience in the real world and having no hands on experience in whatever field they claim to be an expert in at the time. Many seem to come from rich, spoiled backgrounds. They have always been told they are good at whatever they do by their parents and the PC educational systems who hand out awards to everybody and tells them how special they are without having to push themselves to excel to stand out among the rest. This creates arrogance and a false sense of bravado and I think they have been done a great disservice by not being told they suck when they do.
So now we will have to suffer another bailout that will only raise our tax bill a few hundred or thousands more because of this bs and the amnesty bs they are rolling out. Whenever someone in Washington says this won’t cost taxpayers another dime I know they’re secretly muttering “but it will cost them several hundreds of dollars more a year”. We have a runaway government that no longer needs our votes anymore. It’s in name only. Ceremonial to present the illusion that our vote counts when the results are really tallied beforehand electronically to meet the needs of the tyrranical elite.
We just need to say no. You don’t have an open endured credit card anymore, Mr. President.
We say no. That shuts down the government. The media plays that up every 10 minutes like its a worse imminent threat then ISIS and Ebola combined. Then the GOP caves.
(sigh)...we’ve seen this all before.
ObamaCare = Illegal
Oh wait he’s a friend of the court.
I’m not a fan of crony capitalism. It’s a shame Democrats and RINOs love it so much.
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