Since they can't completely repeal Obamacare, congressional Republicans are just going to keep finding ways to undermine it, even if that means causing real harm to the millions of people who are now enrolled through. The latest effort is a dubious assertion that the administration has been making illegal payments to insurers.
They say the administration is violating the Affordable Care Act by prioritizing payments to insurers over payments to the U.S. Treasury, and have grilled Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell about the matter at recent hearings. […]
At issue is ObamaCare’s reinsurance program, which is designed to protect insurers against high costs for sicker enrollees in the early years of the law. Under the program, the government collects money from insurers and then gives it to plans with high-cost enrollees.
The reinsurance program was designed to collect $10 billion in its first year of existence, 2014, while collecting another $2 billion that would be deposited into the U.S. Treasury.
But not enough money was brought in to cover those amounts, so the administration, through regulations in 2014, prioritized giving money to insurers. None of the money was given to Treasury for the first year.
One expert on the law, Tim Jost at Washington and Lee University, says that the administration's "administration’s interpretation of the law is 'reasonable,' given that it did not collect enough money to cover all the costs," because the critical purpose of the reinsurance provision is payments to insurers—which helps insurers in turn keep premiums more affordable for everyone getting the insurance and keeps subsidy levels down for the government—and not "general tax collection." Because Congress refused to do anything to amend the law to clarify this, the administration didn't have much choice but to make the payments a priority.
The administration also reminded lawmakers that it announced its decision to make those payments in regulations, opened for public comment, and that while plenty of groups were supportive—the "American Academy of Actuaries praised the decision to prioritize payments to insurers over the Treasury, saying the move could help lower premiums"—no one from the House or Senate seemed to notice. They certainly didn't take the time to respond to the notice.
This is just harassment, just another attempt to undermine the law and be obnoxious about it. Because after seven years of practice, it's much easier to try to dismantle President Obama's healthcare program than come up with one of their own.