A policy rider created by Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio and tucked into a 2014 budget bill is pushing many insurers to abandon Obamacare, experts say.
"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 congressional Republicans in an interview with
The Hill.
More than a dozen health insurers representing 800,000 Americans have dropped out of Obamacare exchanges, primarily because the Obama administration no longer has the cash to cover their losses in the marketplace, the Hill reports.
UnitedHealthCare, the nation's largest insurance company, said last week that the possibility of a funding shortfall might lead them to leave the program after next year.
Key to the issue is an Obamacare program called "risk corridors" that was designed to protect insurers against losses, according to the report.
In 2013, Rubio began attacking the program. His effort led to a policy rider that was inserted into the 2014 spending bill that was passed at the end of the year.
The rider prevents the Department of Health and Human Services from tapping into other accounts — such as its overall appropriations or its Medicare funding — to pay for the risk corridors program, the Hill reports.
Rubio also is pushing for Republicans to renew the rider — or simply repeal the risk corridors program — in the budget bill that Congress must pass by Dec. 11 to avoid a government shutdown, the Hill reports.
"So far, we’ve succeeded in stopping the Obama administration from bailing out healthcare companies under Obamacare, and it's critical that Congress once again stand with taxpayers to stop any taxpayer bailout of health insurers from happening,"
Rubio wrote in a letter to Republicans leaders in Congress on Tuesday.
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