Federal funds earmarked to offset Affordable Care Act insurer losses
Source: LA Times
The Obama administration has quietly adjusted key provisions of its signature healthcare law to potentially make billions of additional taxpayer dollars available to the insurance industry if companies providing coverage through the Affordable Care Act lose money.
The move was buried in hundreds of pages of new regulations issued late last week. It comes as part of an intensive administration effort to hold down premium increases for next year, a top priority for the White House as the rates will be announced ahead of this fall's congressional elections.
Administration officials for months have denied charges by opponents that they plan a "bailout" for insurance companies providing coverage under the healthcare law.
They continue to argue that most insurers shouldn't need to substantially increase premiums because safeguards in the healthcare law will protect them over the next several years.
Read more: http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-80263091/
Can we hear about single payer yet?
More money taken from Healthcare for actual people and given to Financial Services, the virtual people.
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go wrong, since the SCOTUS threw a big monkey wrench into the ACA by letting states opt out of Medicaid. It was unfair to force the privates to risk losing their shirts being forced to take on the care of massively ill people who should have been covered under the Medicaid expansion. It is also unfair to force people who bought ACA insurance to pay the bills for the folks who should have been on the Medicaid expansion. Basically, this a back door way for the administration to help cover the ones who should have been covered by Medicaid--the ones whose state governments actually passed laws preventing their own county hospital authorities from dealing directly with the federal government.
Glad to see that someone is actually doing their job. Hats off to the Obama Administration. They are doing a mighty fine job in a might bad political climate.
