In typical shady fashion, they changed the rule late Friday afternoon to avoid this making the news.
Via
Fox News:
John Q. Public got his pockets picked last weekend by ObamaCare bureaucrats.
In a sneaky and illegal maneuver after close of business Friday, the Obama administration proposed a new rule increasing bailout protection for insurance companies that sell ObamaCare exchange plans. The rule –using taxpayer money, of course — is designed to protect the companies from losses.
It’s illegal, because no president, including Obama, has the constitutional authority to rewrite the laws. The president’s sworn duty is to “take care that laws are faithfully executed.”
The Affordable Care Act, as written and enacted in 2010, contains a bailout provision, Section 1342. It makes insurers whole for losses they were certain to incur by virtue of offering “affordable” plans.
Such losses were inevitable, because ObamaCare rules make it impossible for an insurance company to offer “affordable” plans and still cover costs. The premiums have to cover a long list of mandatory benefits, as well as $100 billion in taxes that the law imposes on insurers over the decade. Most significantly, the premiums have to cover the cost of caring for seriously ill people for the same price as healthy people.
Every state that tried this community rating scheme (including New York ) has seen premiums soar as the healthy, unwilling to foot the bill, stop buying insurance.
The bailout provision was inserted in the law by design to encourage insurers to set premiums too low. That helps the law, and its Democratic backers, look good. It was deception from the start, and a real effort to make a fatally flawed scheme appear as if it is providing affordable health plans.