{"id":22515,"date":"2015-02-26T20:23:38","date_gmt":"2015-02-27T01:23:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=22515"},"modified":"2015-02-26T20:23:38","modified_gmt":"2015-02-27T01:23:38","slug":"treasury-dept-approves-3-billion-transfer-to-insurance-companies-that-congress-denied","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/22515\/treasury-dept-approves-3-billion-transfer-to-insurance-companies-that-congress-denied\/","title":{"rendered":"Treasury Dept. Approves $3 Billion Transfer to Insurance Companies that Congress Denied"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A letter from House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) demands an explanation from the Treasury Department on why it allowed $3 billion in payments to ObamaCare insurance companies that Congress never approved.<\/p>\n<p>In a well-documented piece, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/treasury-wont-explain-decision-to-make-3-billion-in-obamacare-payments\/article\/2560739 \" target=\"_blank\">Philip Klein<\/a> gives a disturbing summary of the Obama administration deliberately refusing to follow the law.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt issue are payments to insurers known as cost-sharing subsidies,\u201d writes Klein. \u201cThese payments come about because President Obama\u2019s healthcare law forces insurers to limit out-of-pocket costs for certain low income individuals by capping consumer expenses, such as deductibles and co-payments, in insurance plans. In exchange for capping these charges, insurers are supposed to receive compensation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s the rub.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s tricky is that Congress never authorized any money to make such payments to insurers in its annual appropriations, but the Department of Health and Human Services, with the cooperation of the U.S. Treasury, made them anyway,\u201d says Klein.<\/p>\n<p>As proof, Klein cites a $4 billion funding request for the cost-sharing subsidies program in 2014 that was not fulfilled by Congress. It\u2019s now 2015, the bills are coming due, and the Obama administration effectively said, \u201cNever mind.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Whether the domain is <a href=\"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/index.php\/commentary\/58-immigration\/2480-on-obamas-amnesty-senate-gop-shouldnt-outsource-responsibility-to-judges\" target=\"_blank\">immigration<\/a> or ObamaCare, the default setting for this administration seems to be that if it can\u2019t get what it wants the legal way, it\u2019s just as good to go around the law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A letter from House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) demands an explanation from the Treasury Department on why it allowed $3 billion in payments to ObamaCare insurance companies that Congress never approved. In a well-documented piece, Philip Klein gives a disturbing summary of the Obama administration deliberately refusing to follow the law. \u201cAt [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[84,3308,981,1829,35,802,2594,2249,3492],"class_list":["post-22515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-congress","tag-health","tag-immigration","tag-insurance","tag-obamacare","tag-paul-ryan","tag-rule-of-law","tag-subsidy","tag-treasury"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22515"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22519,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22515\/revisions\/22519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}