“@AP: BREAKING: Obama administration says health care subsidies will keep flowing despite court decision.”
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The subsidies flow to the participating health insurance companies. If this ruling stands, all these subsidies will RETROACTIVELY be determined to be overpayments that need to be paid back. Of course, repayment of the paid subsidies may possibly be waived but I’m pretty certain the General Counsels for these insurance companies are painting a pretty bleak picture for their executives today. And I’m sure there are quite a few of these executives wondering why in hell they were stupid enough to decide to participate.
Financially, THERE WILL BE BLOOD.
My guess is that the Obama administration will simply claim that they are bailing out the insurance companies as promised.
The real import of this bill is that it complicates the coverage of the illegals, with or without amnesty. If they send illegals to states that depended on the federal exchange. Of course, most of the illegals would all be put on Medicaid and get it free.
Here’s a question for everyone. We have a ruling, but know that it will be appealed.
How will insurance companies operating on the Federal exchanges have to react? They can’t just assume that the ruling will be overturned, right?
Which means their fiduciary duty will be to adjust their 2015 rates to reflect the assumption that the subsidies won’t be there/will be revoked. Possibly with the subsidies needing to be repaid.
If so, this Fall’s election just got a whole lot more interesting.