You may remember how in the Republican debates last year, Marco Rubio bragged, “The other candidates say they want to repeal the ACA, but I actually did something about it.” He was referring to the elimination of “risk corridors.” I know this is a “mego” (“my eyes glaze over”) phrase, so I’ll try to explain it quickly.
Risk Corridors are a fund created by the ACA to make up losses to insurers who do not achieve forecasted profits from participating in the ACA Exchanges. The payments are made from funds contributed by the insurers. The Bush-created Medicare D drug plan implemented the same risk corridor system.
But Rubio and other Republicans like Jeff Sessions cynically put in a 2014 spending bill a prohibition against risk corridors, killing what they were fine with for Medicare D. Rubio bragged that he had eliminated a “bail out” for insurance companies.
Rectification of Names writes today about a US Court of Claims Judge’s decision in favor of insurer Moda, finding:
“There is no genuine dispute that the Government is liable to Moda,” he ruled in a decision issued Thursday. “The Government made a promise in the risk corridor program that it has yet to fulfill.” He directed the government “to fulfill that promise. After all, to say to [Moda], 'The joke is on you. You shouldn't have trusted us,' is hardly worthy of our great Government.”
Michael Hiltzik of the LA Times notes:
even if the insurers eventually get paid, the GOP attack on the risk corridor program, and by extension on the Affordable Care Act in general, did a lot of damage. In a survey for the New England Journal of Medicine in November, Bagley wrote that the GOP measure “hit particularly hard” at new co-op health plans, which were thinly capitalized but supported by Affordable Care Act loans. Deprived of full risk-corridor payments, “by the end of summer 2016, just seven of 23 co-ops were still in business. As the co-ops collapsed, almost a million people were forced to look elsewhere for coverage.” That contributed to “a sharp reduction in competition on the [Obamacare] exchanges.”
The decision can be appealed or otherwise blunted by Congress, but it’s still a step in the right direction.
And it’s yet another example of the Anti-Policy, All Political corrupt GOP today. An idea approved for Medicare D and which enhances competition, is bad because it helps the ACA to succeed.
It’s more than just hypocrisy — it’s Power-driven cynicism disregarding the well-being of Americans — the same as the force behind the current lethal “Trumpcare.”
Our job — pushing the media and getting voters to understand the basic truth: Republicans want to kill you or your fellow Americans.