The very act of repealing Obamacare is going to create chaos for the whole healthcare sector, but mostly in the health insurance market under the program. Even with the promise of a replacement plan a few years down the line (and does anybody believe that after six years of promises, there will ever be a replacement from Republicans?) the uncertainty of yanking the rug out from under insurers is creating a lot of headaches for everybody. That includes Republicans who are now forced into making good on all of their outlandish promises. And they are under a lot of pressure from the insurance industry to keep and strengthen the measures that they've been calling a "bailout" for insurers.
“We may have to agree to do something for a two- to three-year period that we normally wouldn’t do in the long-term to make sure we give people the relief,” [Sen. Lamar] Alexander (R-TN), [the chair of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee,] told TPM Wednesday, though he had previously said “let’s just see” when asked if that included any taxpayer funded programs. [...]
“Some Republicans latched on to risk stabilizing programs as bailouts for insurers,” said Larry Levitt, vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “The context was many insurers were losing money because more sick people than anticipated signed up and so Republicans have tried to frame these risk stabilization measures as bailing out insurers that were unprofitable under the ACA, and in the sense bailing out the ACA.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), for instance, made his signature cause attacking the ACA's temporary risk corridors program, which shifted funds from plans that pay out less than expected in claims to plans that pay out more than expected. Republicans slipped language into a must-pass 2014 funding bill that blocked the government from using Health and Human Services funding to make up the shortfall in the program. Now ironically, this and other ACA risk programs could help ease a transition that health care policy experts warn will cause major disruption no matter which alternative Republicans eventually settle on.
“This environment creates a lot of uncertainty for insurers, so the programs that Republicans called bailouts before may be useful in this chaotic period,” Levitt said.
Mitch McConnell’s deputy and primary mouthpiece, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), says “no bailouts” but also says Republicans are talking to “insurance carriers and others to try to make sure that nobody falls through the cracks during the transition.” Which means he’s getting the message from insurers. He was also asked if he considered a risk corridors program like the one Republicans have been bashing to carry through the a transition “a bailout” to which he answered, “I’m not going to judge a specific. [...] I just don’t know enough about what you’re asking me to be able to say.”
Good to know that the number-two man in the Senate doesn’t know enough about the massive program he’s about to destroy to know how to fix it. I suspect that the industry is going to continue to educate him, and of course he could always ask his counterparts across the aisle to explain the complicated bits to him.