Highmark Sues U.S. Over Affordable Care Act
18th May 2016
Highmark, the insurance arm of Pittsburgh-based nonprofit Highmark Health, said in the suit that the U.S. failed to live up to obligations to pay the insurer nearly $223 million owed under an ACA program known as “risk corridors,” which aimed to limit the financial risks borne by insurers entering the new health-law markets. The suit claims “violations of the mandatory risk-corridor payment obligations prescribed” in the health law.
This is money that Congress refused to appropriate, so Obama is providing it from his ‘stash’.
The federal Department of Health and Human Services announced last fall that insurers initially would receive only 12.6% of the money they claimed under the risk-corridor program for 2014, its first year of operation. Highmark is seeking the full amount it says is due to it for that year.
Apparently Obama’s ‘stash’ is pretty bare.
The risk-corridor suits are the latest sign that six years after its passage, the ACA continues to generate intense legal controversy. Just in the past week, a federal court ruled that the Obama administration overstepped its authority in making certain payments under the law without explicit appropriations from Congress, and the Supreme Court sent back to lower courts a case regarding religious employers’ role in covering contraception.
Apparently Obama doesn’t really have a ‘stash’ after all. Perhaps he’ll dip into his book royalties. (Cue raucous laughter.)
Highmark’s suit says agency officials have reiterated that the federal government is obligated to make full risk-corridor payments.
But that acknowledgment “is an insufficient substitute for full and timely payment of the amounts owed,” the complaint says.
Obamacare – the gift that keeps on shivving.