Rubio Targeting Obamacare "Bailout"
MIAMI (CBSMiami) – Senator Marco Rubio continues to push a bill he's proposed to end what he describes as an "Obamacare" bailout.
Rubio is targeting what's known as "risk corridors." Under the law, a temporary program (set to end in 2016) would help protect insurance companies financially if they ended up with higher cost patients in the market exchanges.
The program aims to put together a pool of money by which insurance companies that enroll younger and healthier people will pay into to help out insurers who end up with sicker customers. By using the program, which has been used in the past by programs like Medicare Part D, it seeks to limit large rate hikes until the marketplaces are stabilized after the first three years of the Affordable Care Act.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the risk corridor provision contained in the ACA is expected to be deficit neutral, meaning the money coming from the low-risk insurers would equal out to the money paid out to high-risk insurers, according to Talkingpointsmemo.com.
"What the law says is: 'Now, the federal government, meaning you and your taxpayer dollars, will have to come in and bail these companies out,"' Rubio said. "To me, that is absolutely wrong on two fronts. Number one: government should not be participating in using taxpayer funds to bail out private companies. And number two, the second problem is if you've got to bail out ObamaCare with federal funds, it tells you the law is a failure. We should not be bailing out a failure."
Rubio though has picked up more than a dozen co-sponsors of his bill in the Senate, but no Senate action is expected on the bill in the near future.
The program Rubio is targeting will end after three years, according to the Affordable Care Act.
