Trump To Now End Ocare Cost-Sharing Subsidies, As Were Never Authorized By Congress

As you can imagine, this has sent Obamacare supporters (who mostly do not use Ocare themselves) into a tizzy. Moonbat Level 10. Given them the vapors

(Politico) President Donald Trump plans to cut off subsidy payments to insurers selling Obamacare coverage in his most aggressive move yet to undermine the health care law, according to two sources close to the discussions.

The subsidies, which are worth an estimated $7 billion this year and are paid out in monthly installments, may stop almost immediately since Congress hasn’t appropriated funding for the program.

The decision, which leaked out only hours after Trump signed an executive order calling for new regulations to encourage cheap, loosely regulated health plans – delivered a double whammy to Obamacare after months of failed GOP efforts to repeal the law. With open enrollment for the 2018 plan year set to launch in two weeks, the moves seem aimed at dismantling the law through executive actions.

Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed the decision in a statement emailed to reporters at 10:47 p.m. Thursday.

“Based on guidance from the Department of Justice, the Department of Health and Human Services has concluded that there is no appropriation for cost-sharing reduction payments to insurance companies under Obamacare,” she said. “In light of this analysis, the Government cannot lawfully make the cost-sharing reduction payments. …The bailout of insurance companies through these unlawful payments is yet another example of how the previous administration abused taxpayer dollars and skirted the law to prop up a broken system.”

Congress has never appropriated the money for the cost-sharing subsidies (under Section 1402), otherwise known as insurance company bailouts due to the implementation of a law that doesn’t Understand How Insurance Works, hence, any payments are illegal. Furthermore, a judge agreed that the payments were unConstitutional.

Scrapping the subsidy payments is likely to jolt already fragile Obamacare markets — although the impact may be less severe than it would have been a few months back.

If the Ocare markets are so fragile, that should tell us that this was a terrible law, one which set up a bad system, should it not?

There’s even a suggestion that insurers will sue Trump over this. That’ll be tossed quickly, because there is no statutory funding authorized by Congressional budgets to pay these out.

As Dr. Marc Siegel just said on TV as I write this, insurers stay in Ocare when it benefits them, and leave when they don’t. But consumers are trapped by this system.

Crossed at Right Wing News.