Posted on 12/05/2013 2:18:09 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
"....Starting in January, insurers will be forced to offer coverage to individuals suffering from pre-existing conditions. When drafting the legislation, lawmakers wanted to make sure that individual insurers didnt worry about getting stuck with a disproportionate share of very sick enrollees with high medical costs. If that were to happen, it could motivate insurers to attempt to manipulate plan offerings so as to cherry pick the healthier participants. So lawmakers included several provisions to guard against this possibility, one being the risk corridors.
A simple way of explaining the risk corridors program is that it requires insurers to estimate their expected level of costs for providing health insurance in the following benefit year. Those insurers who have much lower costs than expected must pay a certain amount to the federal government. Those who have much-higher-than-expected costs receive money from the federal government.
As I wrote previously, the Congressional Budget Office effectively never included the program in its cost estimate for Obamacare because it assumed that the contributions from insurers would equal the payments to insurers. In other words, the CBO assumed it would be a wash and have no impact on federal deficits.
But that assumption is beginning to look a lot less likely. The program was designed to protect individual insurers against major losses, but it did not anticipate industry-wide losses, which look a lot more likely now given the implementation problems that have plagued Obamacare and have possibly deterred younger and healthier Americans from purchasing insurance. Thus, far from having no deficit impact, American taxpayers could be on the hook for a major insurance bailout.
And that bailout is about to get bigger....."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
If/when the housing market returns to normalcy, I’m wondering just how many people out there are going to connect the increased tax costs of doing business in that arena to PPACA [I think we ought to call it the Citizens’ Affordable Care Act :^) ]
Thank goodness we get to vote for our lawmakers. Aren’t they swell?
Has there ever been a tax law written and implemented, supported by SCOTUS, for the express purpose of subsidizing a private industry prior to the ACA?
The answer is yes.
If you look at seed licensing laws, you will find such an example.
wow, bailouts of previous bailouts. We are going exponential..
And now there’s a tax if they make too much money. And the Feds should study Holywood for creative accounting that buries profits. Fools.
And, since the insurance companies pretty well own our legislators anyway, I'm sure they'll get what they want.
This is hardly surprising. The way the ACA law is written, the government would not cover all of the insurance industry losses in any given year. Because of this the insurance industry would naturally raise rates, perhaps massively, in the following year in order to return to profitability.
That’s how insurance works.
That’s how Death Spirals work.
So Obama wants, once again, to take “Admimistrative Action” in violation of the law to make sure this does not happen. Just pump up the money paid out to the Insuance Industry by the American taxpayer in order to keep Obamacare profitable and “Problem Solved”.
Life is good when you are not constrained by the rule of law. Mao understood that. So did Stalin. Now the idea is catching on in Washington D. C.
Remember WHO, and WHAT, it is we are dealing with here. These are not Democrats, they are RADICAL ACADEMIC SOCIALISTS...
George Wiley’s stated purpose for forming the NWRO, which today is ACORN/SEIU/OFA, was to put so many people on government programs, that it eventually crashes the system, and the White-run power structure, creating the chaotic conditions needed for the implementation of “True Socialism”. (ie, a Maoist-style dictatorship, with blacks ruling over whites).
You are on the right track.
How obama wants to sweeten the deal? I believe, the sweetener was already tucked into the abomocare bill that was written with the help of the insurance companies. It’s already the “law of the land”.
He doesn’t care how much money he has to give the insurance companies to help him fix this mess. He plans on the government eventually taking everything they have, anyway.
This is a good thing, seeing as we’ve all been so worried about the poor insurance companies lately.
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