Rubio budget win is dealing heavy blow to ObamaCare

[Geee]

The Hill:

Sen. Marco Rubio may have dealt the biggest blow in the GOP’s five-year war against ObamaCare.

 

A 2014 budget measure inspired by the Florida senator and presidential hopeful is pushing some insurers to drop out of the ObamaCare exchanges, experts say.

 

“I think this is one of the most effective things they’ve done so far in terms of trying to undermine the Affordable Care Act,” Tim Jost, a healthcare law professor at Washington and Lee University, said of Republicans in Congress.

This fall, more than a dozen health insurers representing 800,000 people have dropped out of the ObamaCare exchanges, many out of fear that the administration no longer has the cash to cushion their losses in the costly early years of the marketplace.

 

The nation’s largest insurer, UnitedHealthCare, specifically mentioned the specter of a funding shortfall last week when it threatened to end its participation in the exchanges after 2016.

 

The angst in the industry centers on an obscure program in the healthcare law known as “risk corridors” that was designed to shield insurers against losses.

 

Rubio in 2013 went on the warpath against the program, decrying it as a “taxpayer bailout.” He penned op-eds against it, testified about it as the star witness at a House Oversight Committee hearing and even made his case to top House Republicans like then-Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio).