3/22/17

Risk corridors = the first ten years after ACA was implemented, insurance companies were expected to lose money because of the influx of sick people who had not had insurance previously.

The ACA promised to reimburse those loses for the first 10 years in order to get insurance companies on board.

Rubio and other Republicans refused to fully fund risk corridor reimbursement in 2015, so by 2016:

So the insurance companies did the only things they could.  In (mostly red) states with low incomes and thus poorer health, they simply pulled out of the marketplace altogether.  This has left some states with only one single insurer left.  In others, they jacked up their prices to make up their losses.

It all hit the fan in the fall of 2016, right before the election.

Rubio’s October Surprise was extraordinarily effective.  October 2016 saw an explosion of stories in the news about how health insurance companies were either pulling out of ACA exchanges, or jacking their prices up wildly.

It’s still in litigation now, but some of the effects can’t be mitigated.

Meanwhile, federal judge Thomas Wheeler of the US Court of Federal Claims, ruled recently (as reported last month by Forbes) that the feds actually have to pay back – to the tune of about $8 billion – the moneys lost by health insurance companies operationg in good faith.

But it’s way too late; dozens of nonprofits started to provide health insurance through the exchanges have already gone bankrupt, and the health insurance giants are both subsuming their smaller competitors and merging like there’s no tomorrow. Additionally, Wheeler’s ruling is certain to be appealed – meaning it’s in limbo for the moment.

Consolidation among health insurance giants means that there is little to no competition – regardless of whether or not you introduce competition across state lines.  Which sets the stage for the giants increasing premiums.

So, yet again, the GOP is quite happy to throw their constituency under the bus in order to achieve their aims.

How Republicans quietly sabotaged Obamacare long before Trump came into office