So, how’s that fantastic government program, ObamaCare, doing? You know, that program that would let you keep your doctor or your plan if you liked it, or reduce your costs by $2,500 dollars per year? The program that, overall, would save us all money? Well, the Washington  Post has  an update, and it seems that the “Affordable” Care Act isn’t very affordable, even for the government that created it. In fact, it’s having to use a 1950s-era law to come up with the money to pay insurers.
And someone you know was trashing ObamaCare recently. See who you can figure out who it was in Name That Quote!
Mentioned links:
Obama administration may use obscure fund to pay billions to ACA insurers
Bill Clinton bashes Obamacare as ‘crazy system’ on campaign trail

Show transcript
So, how’s that fantastic government program, ObamaCare, doing? You know, that program that would let you keep your doctor or your plan if you liked it, or reduce your costs by $2,500 dollars per year? The program that, overall, would save us all money? Well, the Washington  Post has  an update.
The Obama administration is maneuvering to pay health insurers billions of dollars the government owes under the Affordable Care Act, through a move that could circumvent Congress and help shore up the president’s signature legislative achievement before he leaves office.
Justice Department officials have privately told several health plans suing over the unpaid money that they are eager to negotiate a broad settlement, which could end up offering payments to about 175 health plans selling coverage on ACA marketplaces, according to insurance executives and lawyers familiar with the talks.
The payments most likely would draw from an obscure Treasury Department fund intended to cover federal legal claims, the executives and lawyers said. This approach would get around a recent congressional ban on the use of Health and Human Services money to pay the insurers.
So, it’s dealing with the “unexpected” costs by scooting around the law and finding loopholes. That’s very similar to how Democrats got the law passed in the first place, by denying it was a tax, but then classifying it as a tax so that they could pass it with a lower threshold of votes, locking out Republicans completely. At least they’re being consistent! Because  when Donald Trump uses tax “loopholes” to pay as little as he can (just like you and I do), that’s “evil”. But when the government does it, it’s somehow OK.
So then, why do they have to do this? The reason is one that conservatives predicted long before the law was ever snuck through…I mean, passed.
The start of negotiations came amid an exodus of health plans from the insurance exchanges that are at the heart of the law. More than 10 million Americans have gained coverage through the marketplaces since they opened in 2014.
But many insurers are losing money on their new customers, who tend to be relatively sick and expensive to treat. As a result, some smaller plans have been driven out of business and a few major ones are defecting from exchanges for the coming year.
Of those 10 million, the article doesn’t say how many had the rug pulled out from under them once they thought that they were safe because the government said they were safe. Insurance providers and co-ops – some rather large – have had to pull out of the exchanges because you can’t pay your employees with government promises. And now, as the article notes later on, they’re having to tap into a Treasury fund created in the 1950s to get the cash to pay up on ...