During his first run for the presidency in 2008, President Obama blasted the influence of insurance lobbyists and vowed to take on the industry if elected. Yet as president, he passed a health care law that funnels more than $1 trillion in subsidies to insurers, and fines Americans who do not purchase their products. And on Friday, the Obama administration relented to pressure by the insurance industry, vowing to use additional taxpayer dollars to help bail out insurers from losses racked up as part of his health care law.

The issue concerns a provision in Obamacare known as the risk corridors program, which was designed to stabilize insurance premiums in the early years of the law’s implementation. Essentially, the idea was to have insurers who do better than expected pay money into a fund within the Department of Health and Human Services that would then be used to finance payments to other insurers who rack up larger-than-expected losses.