WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. and U.S. Senator Marco Rubio introduced the Taxpayer Bailout Protection Act to prevent a taxpayer-funded bailout of insurance companies under Obamacare. This legislation mandates that payments under the risk corridor program, the mechanism by which payments to insurance companies would be made, must be revenue neutral. This will ensure no taxpayer dollars can be used to cover money lost to insurance companies.
Original legislation introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Dr. Cassidy and Representative Leonard Lance in May 2014 was included in the Fiscal Year 2015 Omnibus that was signed into law. The Taxpayer Bailout Protection Act would extend this protection longer than a year, making it permanent.
“Obamacare is a failed law. It is hurting Louisiana families with higher premiums, higher cost-sharing, and lower quality health care. The risk corridor program, as written, exposes hardworking taxpayers to these and other failures,” said Senator Cassidy. “As we continue to work to repeal Obamacare and replace it with solutions that empower patients, not bureaucrats, we need to do what we can to make the current law less onerous on the American people. This is one step to help achieve that goal and protect taxpayers.”
“Obamacare needs to be repealed and replaced entirely, and one immediate guarantee we should give taxpayers is that not a single one of their dollars should be used to bail out health insurance companies that end up losing money because of this bad law,” said Senator Rubio. “Last year, we won an important victory by making sure taxpayer dollars aren’t used in the Obamacare bailout program for this year, but we should pass a measure like this one to take this option entirely off the table forever.”
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