The Daily Caller reports:
The rent-seekers show they aren't worthy of the stolen money from federal taxpayers.
Federal officials admitted for the first time Monday that the collapse of the largest and most costly of nearly two dozen Obamacare-funded health insurance co-ops may not be the program’s last failure.
The admission followed the collapse Friday of Health Republic of New York after regulators ordered the co-op “to cease writing new health insurance policies,” leaving 155,000 customers scrambling to find new coverage by the end of the year.
“If a co-op has solvency issues, and we cannot rule out that others may this year, we will work with the states so that consumers have affordable options on the marketplace,” said Department of Health and Hhuman Services spokesman Aaron Albright. “As a startup business, we recognize not all will succeed.” Albright is a spokesman for the department’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which administers Obamacare.
The federal government gave Health Republic $265 million in start-up money in 2012. Taxpayers also funded an additional $91 million in emergency “solvency loans” last year, for a total of $356 million. The startup funds were to be paid back after the co-ops became financially viable.
