The IRS raised concerns in early 2014 about the legality of certain ObamaCare payments that Republicans are now challenging in a lawsuit, according to a deposition from a former agency official.
David Fisher, who was the IRS’s chief risk officer, told the House Ways and Means Committee that agency officials questioned whether the Affordable Care Act provided the authority to make certain payments to insurers without an appropriation from Congress.
Most senior IRS officials ended up concluding that the payments were legal after a meeting with the White House to hear its legal justification, and the administration eventually went ahead with disbursing the funds.
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Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina sued the federal government, becoming the latest health insurer to claim it is owed money under the Affordable Care Act.
The suit, filed on Thursday in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C., says the U.S. failed to live up to obligation to pay the insurer more than $147 million owed under an ACA program known as “risk corridors,” which aimed to limit the financial risks borne by insurers entering the new health-law markets.
The suit argues that the federal government violated the language of the health law, as well as a contractual obligation to the North Carolina insurer.
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With almost half of the U.S. population using prescription medications, expensive sticker prices on certain medications have led policymakers to address drug prices through proposed legislation and regulation. This paper examines the various factors that influence how drugs are priced–including regulatory burdens and health care payment models–in order to provide an understanding of these prices in the larger picture of American health care.
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