Rubio’s Poison Pill for the ACA (Obamacare)

[ScubaSteve]

Its all over the news that Health insurers are decrying rates for the Affordable Care Act are going up 25%! Some say 40%, 60%, and others 80%, hailing the downfall of Obamacare as a failure.

So let’s understand that we all know that by bringing everyone into this insurance program that insurers could take a hit by covering so many very sick folks against what profit they could make off of healthy young adults.

The plan says (in essence) if you pay out more than you take in the Government will give you a subsidy to make up for the loss. Otherwise, without the subsidy an insurer would have to either raise the rates to make up for the loss, or get out altogether because who can operate a business at a loss?

Little Marco sponsored a bill stuck into the 2015 Ominbus bill that says if an insurer pays out more than it is taking in, then the Government cannot use tax payer dollars to bail them out, effectively eliminating the very subsidies that makes the ACA functional.

That little fucker stuck a poison pill into a huge bill last year that right now is forcing the hand of insurers to raise the rates to make up for their shortfall, while others are in fact getting out of the healthcare exchanges altogether.

All to make it “look” like the ACA is a failure and therefore “I told you so.” Such a sneaky, conniving, little bastard…

Snip…

“Rubio's provision took aim at an Affordable Care Act program designed to resolve one of the knottiest problems facing the president's plan to expand health insurance: convincing insurance companies to take on clients with higher health risks. To prevent premium spikes for customers of companies that did so, the bill created a “risk corridor” pool. It collects money from insurers that enroll less-costly patients and pays it out to those who enroll more-costly patients. Rubio effectively sabotaged that by barring taxpayers from covering a potential shortfall.

In 2013, Rubio began decrying the risk corridor provision—modeled after one included in the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit of 2003 that experts say it was successful at lowering risk—as a “bailout” of insurers. He pushed legislation to repeal it. The bill didn't pass, but thanks to his efforts, a provision barring the federal government from making up risk corridor shortfalls got tucked into a must-pass bill funding the federal government that Congress passed and Obama signed late last year.
This fall, the government announced a risk corridor shortfall of $2.5 billion.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-11-25/marco-rubio-didn-t-kill-obamacare-but-here-s-how-he-undermined-it

[link:http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-11-25/marco-rubio-didn-t-kill-obamacare-but-here-s-how-he-undermined-it|

[livingonearth]

1. This kind of stuff infuriates me.

[raging moderate]

2. Is there some outside the box solution?

Could there be a foundation set up, or a trust fund, or something?

[ScubaSteve]

3. There’s the rub…

The ACA is paid for including the subsidies. This bill simply removed one key funding feature, subsidies, rendering it impotent. A bill reinstating this feature needs to be passed by Congress and it will all be good once again.

Here’s a short article I found by NPR a few years ago with a somewhat simplified breakdown of how the ACA is funded…

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2013/11/07/243584170/how-the-affordable-care-act-pays-for-insurance-subsidies[link:http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2013/11/07/243584170/how-the-affordable-care-act-pays-for-insurance-subsidies|