Obamacare Execs Broke the Law and Cost Taxpayers Billions
Source: thefiscaltimes.com | Re-Post KSS Insurance 11/7/2016 –
Just how far did the Obama administration go to keep its failing signature program afloat? According to a new report from the Government Accountability Office, its Health and Human Services Department broke the law to bail out insurers participating in the health-insurance exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act. In doing so, it took funds meant to protect taxpayers and instead used them to pay off larger-than-expected losses under Obamacare.
At issue is the Transitional Reinsurance Program, designed to allow insurers a space of three years to find effective calculations for risk and to stabilize premium prices. The ACA statute authorized HHS to collect $10 billion from insurers in 2014 to fund the reinsurance program using a method of its own devising to calculate “proportionate” contributions from each insurer, plus another $2 billion to pass to the Treasury.
Those figures diminish to $6 billion in 2015 with another $2 billion for Treasury, and then to $4 billion and $1 billion in the final year of 2016. The HHS share would be used to subsidize insurers based on the extent of losses, while taxpayers would be guaranteed a return on the program.
