The Trump administration has settled a long-fought lawsuit with the House and Democratic attorneys general over payments to Obamacare insurers.
Details of the settlement agreement were not available, according to a report in Bloomberg.
The GOP-controlled House filed the lawsuit in 2014 against the Obama administration over the constitutionality of cost-sharing reduction payments to insurers.
The payments reimburse insurers for lowering the co-pays and deductibles for low-income Obamacare customers, as required under the Affordable Care Act. But the payments were halted by President Trump on Oct. 18, and Congress is trying to reach a deal to restore them for two years.
The House argued in the lawsuit that payments were unconstitutional because they were not appropriated by Congress.
While Obamacare’s tax credits are mandatorily appropriated, the law does not say the CSRs were. So, the lawsuit challenged whether it was constitutional to pay the lawsuits without an appropriation.
A federal judge agreed with the House last year but stayed her ruling until after the presidential election.
Since Trump has entered the White House, a decision on the lawsuit has been put off.
President Trump said in October that he would not make the payments next year because of concerns about constitutionality, despite insurers threatening to raise premiums to offset the loss of the payments.
After the payments were halted, a group of liberal states’ attorneys general sued to restore them. This settlement appears to address those lawsuits as well, Bloomberg said.
