The ruling says health insurers are owed money that Congress never appropriated.
by Peter Suderman
Reason.com
A decade after Obamacare passed, the Supreme Court is still untangling the law’s legislative messes.
Today, the high court ruled that the federal government owes health insurers roughly $12 billion for losses incurred under the law, thanks to a program known as risk corridors.
When Obamacare’s insurance exchanges first went online, they faced a problem: They were new. For insurers, anything novel represents a risk. And the way insurers typically offset that risk is through higher premiums.
Obamacare’s architects wanted to stop insurers from setting premiums any higher than necessary. So they designed the risk corridor program as a mechanism to essentially socialize the risk—sharing it between insurers and the federal government.