A House lawmaker proposed legislation Thursday to make sure the Obama administration doesn’t provide any last-minute bailouts to Obamacare insurers by settling lawsuits with them.
Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., introduced a bill Thursday that seeks to limit the Justice Department’s ability to settle a series of lawsuits with Obamacare insurers. Republicans have charged that the administration may try to use the department’s Judgment Fund to settle the lawsuits to provide insurers with funding that they are not expected to get from the Republican-led Congress.
The bill would restrict the Judgment Fund from being used to settle any lawsuits from insurers unhappy with the Affordable Care Act’s risk corridor program. Under the program, insurers with high profits pay into the program, and the government pays out insurers with heavy losses.
However, during the first year of the program’s existence, it didn’t work out that way.
Insurers in Obamacare’s exchanges requested $2.7 billion in risk corridor payments, but not enough people paid into the program and it only paid out 12 percent of that amount. Several insurers sued the federal government to try and get the full amount of risk corridor payments.
Now Republicans argue that the government will just settle with these insurers and give them a de facto bailout.
“Using the Judgment Fund to settle the lawsuits and pay out the insurance companies would be ignoring congressional intent,” Griffith said in a statement.
Other GOP lawmakers are making moves in the Senate to do the same thing. The HHS Slush Fund Elimination Act was introduced Friday in the Senate by Sens. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., Marco Rubio, R-Fla., John Barrasso, R-Wyo., and Mike Lee, R-Utah.
The Justice Department has asked a federal court to dismiss the lawsuits. The risk corridor program expires after this year.
