A pending court decision could force the Trump administration to pump billions of dollars into Obamacare insurers, even as the president threatens to let the health care law “implode.”
Health insurers have filed nearly two dozen lawsuits claiming the government owes them payments from a program meant to blunt their losses in the Obamacare marketplaces. That raises the prospect that the Trump administration will have to bankroll a program the GOP has pilloried as an insurer bailout.
Insurers are owed more than $8 billion in payments, and the tab is likely to grow. Insurers say spending restrictions Republicans forced on the “risk corridors” program during the Obama administration, aside from being illegal, are partly to blame for severe turbulence in some Obamacare marketplaces.
“[The Obama administration] repeatedly assured us it was there and it would be a clear obligation of the government,” said Tom Policelli, CEO of Minuteman Health, which is among the insurers suing the government over the shortfall. “Even the federal government is subject to the rules.”
The fiscal hit to the feds could be huge if the insurers win. And it would be one more embarrassing setback for Republicans, who likely saw their best shot at dismantling Obamacare slip away in the Senate’s failed repeal vote early Friday morning. President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has threatened to pull billions in funding from a separate Obamacare subsidy program he's labeled a "bailout" for insurers.
The Trump Administration seems blissfully unaware that until the law is changed they are on the hook for keeping the promises made by Obamacare, and that if they fail to keep them they risk costly lawsuits as well as a cost politically.
Now currently these cases are headed to a three judge panel in Washington, but if the insurers emerge victorious I am positive they will find their way to the Supreme Court.
And what happens there is anybody's guess.
Source http://ift.tt/2vfipjt
