Obama signed the corridor agreement

The Obamacare co-ops are going bankrupt. Obama is withholding the risk payments designed to cover losses during the start up phase. Who pays for the medical services already rendered? The courts will rule that the corridor agreement obligates the federal taxpayer. Expect higher premium costs unless Obama relents, then expect higher taxes.

Who gets paid first when an ObamaCare co-op goes belly up: the doctors and hospitals that cared for co-op enrollees or the federal government, which caused the co-op mess in the first place? If the Obama administration has it way, Uncle Sam will be at the head of the line to recoup losses, quite possibly leaving healthcare providers in the lurch, reported the Daily Caller.
Already, half of the 24 co-ops, nonprofit insurance schemes created by the Affordable Care Act, have flopped. The failed co-ops frittered away $1.4 billion in federal solvency loans, and their demise left at least 800,000 Americans uninsured, at least temporarily.
“The co-ops do not have enough money to pay out their enrollees’ medical claims, much less to repay their loans to the taxpayers,” Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told the Daily Caller. “Once again, American taxpayers will ultimately pay the price of another failure and broken promise of Obamacare.”
That hasn’t stopped the Obama administration from trying to get the Treasury’s money back. Mandy Cohen, chief operating officer of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), told a House subcommittee in February that the administration plans to seek first dibs on repayment from the co-ops’ liquidated assets. “For federal loans, there is an order of repayment,” Cohen said. “I believe we are at the very top of all of the creditors.”
According to the Daily Caller, “Cohen claimed the Justice Department will enforce the CMS policy,” and a CMS spokesman confirmed Cohen’s remarks.
If the administration gets its way, healthcare providers across the country are going to be left holding the bag for tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars’ worth of care they delivered to co-op policyholders. Most likely they will try to recoup their losses by raising their fees, thereby harming future patients and driving up insurance premiums.
Co-Opportunity Health, a co-op that served Iowa and Nebraska, “burned through its 20-year federal solvency loan of $132 million in only two years, according to the liquidator’s report,” wrote the Daily Caller. “By Dec. 31, 2015, the co-op only had $61.6 million in assets and $234 million in liabilities.”
To pay providers, Iowa officials organized a temporary guaranty association funded by private insurance companies. The association, with the permission of the liquidator and the court, has paid $60 million of $113 million owed to doctors and hospitals, but the co-op now must reimburse the guaranty association $54 million that it obviously does not have. To top it all off, CMS, which met with the liquidator to try to get its money back, is withholding $130 million in federal risk corridor payments and $22 million in other receivables, most of which would go to healthcare providers.