This is how
republicans fix
something or someone
that is broken,
give them a poison pill!
(Known as Obamacare, because Obama does care),
is not broken.
The republicans,
like Rubio,
have been systematically
gutting the insurance policy
to make it
fail!
How
Marco Rubio
is quietly killing
Obamacare
Marco Rubio
is quietly killing
Obamacare
Floridians
and
Snowbird's visiting
with intent to live.
Pay closer attention
to this senator in Washington.
Senator Marco Rubio
is the congressperson
leading the charge to take your insurance
and
sending
this state back into the 1960's and beyond!
You want proof?
Type in and see for
yourself.
How Marco Rubio is
quietly killing Obamacare
Rubio, by contrast,
didn’t read Dr. Seuss on the Senate floor,
but he has quietly pushed Obamacare
into what may prove to be a death spiral.
When the Obama
administration was crafting Obamacare, it came up with a crony capitalist
solution to entice reluctant insurers to join the exchanges.
Many insurers
worried that there would not be enough healthy people paying in to cover the
costs of sick people.
So the administration created a “risk corridor” program
to help prop up insurers who lost money in the first three years of the law.
Profitable insurers would pay some of those profits into a pool to help
insurers who lost money.
If the amount insurers lost exceeded what the
companies paid in, the government would step in and make up the difference.
Calling this
“a
taxpayer-funded bailout for insurance companies,”
Rubio last year quietly
inserted language
into the omnibus government spending bill
that barred
the
Department of Health and Human Services
from dipping into general funds to pay
failing insurers.
“While the Obama administration can still administer the
risk-corridor program, for one year at least, they won’t be able to use
taxpayer funds to bail out insurance companies,”
Rubio said.
His provision
sparked little opposition at the time,
but it has proved to be a poison pill
that is killing Obamacare from within.
Last year, insurers
lost $2.9 billion more than expected on Obamacare. But insurers had paid only
$362 million into the program — leaving it more than $2.5 billion short. Thanks
to Rubio’s provision, the administration was allowed to pay only 13 cents of
every dollar insurers requested. Without the taxpayer bailouts, more
than half of the Obamacare insurance cooperatives created under the law
failed. One, Health Republic of Oregon, was expecting a $7.9 million bailout
from the government. Instead, thanks to Rubio, it got only $995,000 — not a
penny of it from the taxpayers. The Oregon co-op announced in October it was
closing its doors. Soon, two other insurers — WinHealth Partners in Wyoming and
Moda Health in Washington state — pulled
out of the exchanges. And United Healthcare, one of the nation’s largest
insurers, announced
that it may leave the Obamacare exchanges in 2016. If that happens, and other
insurers follow United’s lead, that could spell disaster for Obamacare.
The Hill newspaper called Rubio’s provision “the biggest blow in the GOP’s
five-year war against Obamacare.” The New York Times declared
in a front-page story, “For all the Republican talk about dismantling the
Affordable Care Act, one Republican presidential hopeful has actually done
something toward achieving that goal,” adding that Rubio’s provision has
“tangled up the Obama administration, sent tremors through health insurance
markets and rattled confidence in the durability of President Obama’s signature
health law.”
Now that the Obama
administration understands the grave threat Rubio’s provision poses to
Obamacare, Democrats are pushing to block it from this year’s omnibus spending
bill so that they can bail out the insurers. According to Politico, “HHS
officials ... maintained that insurers will eventually receive the requested
payments during the next two years of the temporary program.”
The insurers are
joining the fight. In talking
points obtained by BuzzFeed, Blue Cross Blue Shield Association’s chief
executive, Scott Serota, warned congressional Democrats that Rubio’s provision
“will result in massive premium increases and could cause private insurers to
become insolvent.” In other words, Rubio’s provision poses a mortal threat to
Obamacare.
Rubio maintains that
if it takes a taxpayer bailout of big business to save Obamacare, that alone
proves the law is unsustainable. He is
pushing to keep his bailout ban in the final bill. “Let’s be clear, the
reason these health insurance companies are enduring a financial loss is that
Obamacare is a disastrous law,” Rubio
declared in a letter to House and Senate leaders. “It broke the promise to
lower health insurance premiums ... Now the very architects of this law are
attempting to place taxpayers on the hook.”
He’s right — and now
it’s up to GOP leaders to back him by refusing to agree to any omnibus spending
bill that allows a taxpayer bailout for insurance companies that made a bad bet
on Obamacare.
And Rubio deserves
credit at Tuesday night’s Republican presidential debate as the only candidate
on the stage who has done more than talk about killing Obamacare.
Paul Ryan’s Big Lie
About Obamacare
Obamacare is in a
'death spiral,' says Aetna CEO
The Republican
health care struggle is real