Insurer to Supreme Court: Make the Government Pay Its Bills

A health insurer, Maine Community Health Options, has filed an explanation of why it thinks the U.S. Supreme Court should take a look at the Affordable Care Act risk corridors program.

Congress has prohibited the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from using government cash to make the payments participating health insurers were expecting.

Maine Community Health Options argues in the new filing that the congressional action has no legal effect on the existence of the payment obligations.

“Just as for any other debtor, Congress’s refusal to pay, or to allot funds for payment, does not cancel a payment obligation,” the health insurer says in the filing. “Congress’s failure here to appropriate funds to HHS thus barred HHS from making payments but did not address, let alone negate, the underlying statutory payment obligation. ”

The ACA Risk Corridors Program

Congress and Obama-era regulators at HHS created the risk corridors program in an effort to get health insurers to participate in the ACA public exchange program. Organizers said the government would use cash from thriving exchange plan issuers to help struggling issuers.

The program ended up collecting too little cash from thriving issuers to pay much of what it owed the struggling issuers. The participating health insurers say the program now owes them more than $12 billion.

When Republicans took control of Congress, they succeeded at putting provisions in budget and spending bills that blocked HHS from using any resources other than cash from thriving ACA exchange plan issuers to make the payments.

The Court Cases

Some judges have sided with the insurers seeking to get payments from the federal government. Some have sided with the administration of President Donald Trump and agreed that health insurers had no formal contract requiring HHS to make the ACA risk corridors program payments.

(Related: DOJ Blasts Insurers’ Call for $12B in ACA Risk Corridors Payments)