Miller pointed out that the federal government hasn’t fully kept its promise to offset losses of insurers who set premiums too low during the initial years of Obamacare. While insurers have received some of these payments, Congress has cut part of the program.
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Actually, Congress, for the 2nd year in a row, added language to the budget bill that just made sure Obama/HHS had to comply with the letter of the original law .... they did not “cut” anything. Obama was going to take money out of other funds (taxpayer money) when the risk corridor fund (money put in by insurance companies) didn’t have enough to reimburse insurers for losses in the amount they requested .... when this happened, the insurers only got 12.6% of what they asked for. Lots of “squalling” going on & insurers will be exiting the Obamacare market place in droves because the Obamacare business model does not work.
To reduce the risk to the insurance companies, a reserve fund called a risk corridor was established to compensate them for losses on their policies during Obamacare's first three years of operations. It was funded by a tax on any profits realized by other insurance companies on their Obamacare policies.
Only problem very few insurance companies paid into the reserve fund due to lack of profits!
Part of financing 0bamacare was the nationalization of federal student loans. The loans were all to be issued by the Department of Education, with the interest rate stepping up to 6.8% two years after 0bamacare went into effect. The government was going to “borrow” the student loan money from the Fed at 3%, loan it out at 6.8%, and the profit was to go to fund 0bamacare. It was all part of the “fuzzy math” and concocted financial sheets that supposedly made it “affordable.” But in order for 0bamacare to even look remotely fiscally sustainable, they had to have the student loan money.
Well, go forward two years, and the bill to increase interest rates on student loans to 6.8% came up, and the predictable happened. The Bernie Sanders supporting millenials had a cow. How dare the government increase their loan rates? If I recall correctly, the rate increase didn’t happen.
And so the government abandons even the phoney-baloney numbers and fiscal plan. Now the money isn’t there to reimburse the insurers as 0bama said it would.
It’s a total disaster. Just as it was intended to be.