Crocodile Tears Over The Failing Obamacare Co-Ops--The Canaries In The Obamacare Coal Mine
The biggest complaint seems to be that those mean Republicans forced these co-ops out of business because of a provision they included in the last budget. That provision capped what could be spent on the Obamacare risk corridor reinsurance provision for health plans losing money at the level of what was paid into the program by health plans making money. In other words, the Congress reminded the co-ops and the administration of something that was assumed all along - that the risk corridor provision had to be revenue neutral.
The specific complaint is that because of this Republican budget cap health plans got only 12.6% of what they asked for and expected to get under the risk corridor reinsurance program.
If you would like specific info as to why Obamacare is collapsing & United is bailing, here it is (more excellent info/reading):
My understanding was superficial - as you noticed.
I thought “risk corridors” referred to patient health risks. I did not understand that they referred to the re-insurance subsidy.
I was actually insured by United Healthcare for 14 months, before my Medicare started.
UH tried to game the system by waiting one year to enter the O-Care market. They hoped a significant percentage of people with pre-existing conditions would sign with other insurers before UH started offering policies.
That hope did not work out for my policy. I deliberately kept my retirement income low for those 14 months. I drew significant O-Care subsidies. And I rewarded UH with a $5,000 policy loss because of my pre-existing A-Fib and skin cancer risk.
Personally, I still blame Republicans for O-Care. It's been clear for at least a decade that, politically, America was going to move into some form of organized government health care for those who could not afford it.
In 2010, a break even Medicaid policy would have cost about $5,500. We could have “insured” every American citizen who actually needed, or wanted, a policy for about $200 billion a year.
It would not have been a cheap solution, or easy to implement, but, politically, it would have been a viable alternative to O-Care, and it would have spared us from the O-Care catastrophe that was predictable from the first day.