So, what's the GAO saying about HHS and paying off insurers under Obamacare's reinsurance provisions? They're saying it was illegal. This is a brief answer to a simple question, "Did HHS follow the law in the way it handled payments to insurance companies under the TEMPORARY reinsurance provisions of Obamacare?" (Those "money incentives" to get insurers to participate on exchanges are over according to the law, but insurers still want money they think they're "owed.")
HHS has paid insurance companies and insurers believe they're owed more. The Government Accountability Office concludes: "HHS lacks authority to ignore the statute's directive to deposit amounts from collections under the transitional reinsurance program in the Treasury and is required to collect and deposit amounts for the Treasury, regardless of whether its collections fall short of the amounts specified in statute for reinsurance payments. HHS may not use amounts collected for the Treasury to make reinsurance payments," http://www.gao.gov/products/D14896.
Somehow, this President who couldn't find money to save slashes to food stamps, who couldn't find money to preserve extended unemployment benefits, who couldn't find a way to fix the family glitch in Obamacare that left employed individuals unable to afford dependent coverage for their families, who couldn't find a way to find money to provide seniors with a social security cost of living increase is DETERMINED to find the money to pay out the promised "bribe-type" monies to insurers, many of whom have already left exchanges because of the expiry of the money provisions of reinsurance under Obamacare.
For thinking people, this is not unexpected. Obviously, absent the no-lose provisions, insurers would be looking to leave exchanges and those that stay would charge consumers more. It's the way "bribing" works, isn't it? Pay more and more, and more and more.
Even the non-thinking folk, the Obamacare fanboys and fangirls, could have paid attention to what another part of the government was saying before the GAO's conclusions. The CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE predicted this when it wrote that exchange premiums would go up after the "payola" provisions expired: "Reinsurance payments that the government makes to insurance plans whose enrollees incur particularly high costs for medical care will be phased out over the next two years, placing upward pressure on exchange premiums…" (CBO, Pub. 49973, page 22).
HHS, given enormous power under Obamacare is now objecting that anyone or any part of government would dare to second guess what it does, but the GAO says, "No," HHS can't just ignore law to "bribe" insurance companies.
The payoff program should be OVER, if the Administration intends to follow Obamacare, the amounts paid out to insurance companies already will likely never be recovered, much like the amounts wrongfully paid out to consumers in premium assistance and cost-sharing were "forgiven," and the insurers will never be satisfied until they only insure for wellness and cover nobody who actually NEEDS medical care and services.
