Earlier this week, Democrat Rep. Ami Bera was asked on a local Sacramento news channel whether he supported bailing out insurance companies who lost money as a result of the failures of the ObamaCare exchanges. After some qualifying, and not a small amount of hemming, Bera said “we have to be flexible on that.”
Whatever happened to the Democrat claim that the Republicans were in bed with the insurance industry?
The question is not a hypothetical. ObamaCare, aka Affordable Care Act, provides a mechanism called a “risk corridor.” Under this program, the federal government will reimburse health insurance companies for their losses if the insurance risk pools don’t match the promises made by Democrats and the Obama Administration.
To the extent that ObamaCare could theoretically work, millions of young, healthy people would have to enroll in the health exchanges. Not simply obtain insurance, mind you, but they must purchase it through the exchanges so that their premium dollars can be used to cover the health costs of older, sicker patients. The young have to subsidize the old, in other words.
Although the Obama Administration has been reluctant to provide demographic breakdowns of those purchasing insurance through the exchanges, most observers, including Rep. Ami Bera, concede that not enough young people are signing up through the exchanges.
Ironically, the one provision Democrats point to as an ObamaCare success, i.e. allowing those under 26 to stay on their parents health insurance, may actually undermine the law.
Over the next several months, expect to find many more Democrats like Rep. Ami Bera pressed on the consequences of unkept promises.
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