Ronald Reagan might say, “There they go again.” The Obamacare Perpetual Bailout Machine went into high gear again on Friday, in a typical late-afternoon news dump released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). In a five-paragraph memo, CMS invited insurers to settle outstanding lawsuits regarding an Obamacare bailout program — providing K Street a handy roadmap to obtaining more of federal taxpayers’ hard-earned cash, which administration officials apparently will distribute to insurers on their way out the door. The lawsuits revolve around Obamacare’s risk-corridor program, one of two ostensibly temporary programs, scheduled to expire this December, that provided a transition to the new Obamacare regime. Plans with high profits would pay into the risk-corridor program, and their spending would offset deficits incurred by insurers with large losses. As with most things Obamacare, risk corridors haven’t turned out quite like the administration promised. In 2014, insurers paid in a total of $362 million into the risk-corridor program — but requested $2.87 billion in disbursements. Fortunately, an appropriations rider enacted in December 2014, and subsequently renewed, has thus far prevented CMS from using taxpayer funds to bail out the risk-corridor losses. – READ MORE
