The Obama administration is illegally refusing to make payments to the U.S. Treasury and instead is giving funds collected under Obamacare to insurers, according to a new report from an independent government watchdog, the Government Accountability Office. The funds in question were collected as part of Obamacare’s reinsurance program, and the GAO confirmed that under law, part of the money collected must be deposited into federal coffers, not sent to insurers to prop up ObamaCare.
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President Obama would veto a House bill that would provide an exemption from the individual mandate if someone’s insurance coverage ended mid-year because of a co-op closure, the White House said Tuesday.
The House is debating H.R. 954, the CO-OP Consumer Protection Act, and is slated to vote on the measure later today. The bill responds to the closures of three co-ops, nonprofit insurers that were created under the Affordable Care Act, during the past year. Republicans have pointed to the failures of 16 out of 23 original co-ops as a sign of the 2010 health care law’s weakness.
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Vermont did not properly allocate millions of dollars in federal grants when establishing its marketplace created under the Affordable Care Act, a report released Tuesday by the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General said.
Vermont’s Agency of Human Services did not always follow federal requirements for allocating costs to establishment grants to establish its marketplace or for drawing down establishment grant funds, the report says.
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A post-election fight about giving extra money to Obamacare insurance plans is brewing on Capitol Hill, following a summer of bad news for insurers. The conservative group Freedom Partners launched a campaign Thursday aimed at blocking an “insurer bailout,” which some fear is poised to occur in the final months of the Obama administration. The group is launching a website, BustTheBailouts.com, which it says will provide information to taxpayers and lawmakers about how insurers are lobbying for a bailout. They will also launch a series of videos and meet with lawmakers to advocate their cause.
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House Republicans on Wednesday jumped on rising premium rates and co-op closures to slam the Affordable Care Act, while Democrats lamented another hearing not focused on fixes to the Affordable Care Act.
At a joint Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing, Republicans raised concerns about how rising premiums have affected their constituents, as well as the potential for fraud under the Obamacare exchanges. The subcommittee released a slate of reports earlier this week that slammed the future sustainability of the federal and state-based exchanges.
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Sen. Lamar Alexander is introducing a bill Wednesday that would extend Affordable Care Act subsidies to plans off of the exchanges for some eligible consumers.
The Tennessee Republican is proposing that states could opt to expand the Obamacare subsidies to plans sold off of the exchanges.
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The state-run insurance marketplaces created under the Affordable Care Act may not be sustainable, a GOP report released Tuesday by a House committee concludes.
The Energy and Commerce Committee report concludes that the $5 billion the federal government committed to building state-based exchanges has resulted in a failed experiment, and says that none of the exchanges are currently financially self-sustaining. The report comes ahead of a hearing Wednesday on the Affordable Care Act called by the committee’s health and oversight subcommittees.
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The House Ways and Means Committee on Thursday approved a GOP bill that responds to the failure of about two-thirds of the co-op insurers created under the Affordable Care Act.
The bill, which passed by a voice vote, would exempt people who lost insurance because the co-op through which they bought coverage folded mid-year from the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate.
Roughly 750,000 families have had their coverage disrupted by the closure of 16 of the 23 co-ops created under the 2010 health care law, all citing financial problems, Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) said during the hearing. The bill would exempt consumers from the individual mandate for the remainder of that year, and they would be required to sign up for coverage during the next enrollment period.
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Five Senators are questioning Aetna’s decision to retreat from nearly a dozen Obamacare markets next year and how the decision is tied to the federal government’s attempt to block its proposed merger with Humana, which is being challenged by a Department of Justice antitrust lawsuit.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) sent a letter to Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini Thursday questioning the insurers’ change in perspective about its participation in the Obamacare exchanges this summer after the Department of Justice sued to block the proposed merger.
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Just over 50 percent of Americans disapprove of the Affordable Care Act, according to a Gallup poll released Thursday.
Among people surveyed in the poll, 51 percent said they disapproved of the law, while 44 percent said they approved of it. It’s a slight increase in disapproval of the law since the spring, when a Gallup poll found 49 percent of people disapproved of the law and 47 percent of people approved of it. Overall, Gallup polls have found people have been more pessimistic than optimistic about the law for the past three years.