As one of the last remaining ObamaCare co-ops, Minuteman Health, was the latest victim of the Obama administration’s determination to redistribute wealth and health across the health insurance industry.
Serving 25,000 customers in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, the nonprofit health insurer has been ordered to pay nearly $17 million under ObamaCare’s risk adjustment program:
Under the Affordable Care Act’s risk adjustment program, insurers with healthier customers make payments to insurers with sicker customers. Boston-based Minuteman Health, a nonprofit insurance co-op, recently was ordered to pay $16.7 million, but it objects to how payments are calculated.
In response, Minuteman Health has sued the federal government:
In a lawsuit filed Friday, it argues that instead of assessing only a consumer’s relative health status or actuarial risk, the program calculates payments based on unrelated factors such as how an insurer’s premiums compare to statewide averages. Minuteman said its premiums are substantially lower than average not because its customers are healthier but because its business model focuses on keeping costs low and because its members are more likely to purchase less-expensive plans
Minuteman’s CEO Tom Policelli called ObamaCare’s risk adjustment program a “reverse Robin Hood program”:
“We cannot continue to allow CMS to take our members’ money illegally and give it to more expensive insurance companies,” he said. “CMS has essentially created a reverse Robin Hood program, which harms consumers, small companies and taxpayers.”
Desperate to maintain competition in the ObamaCare exchanges, the Obama administration is naively propping up struggling insurers by penalizing those that are well-performing. With recent reports of insurers dropping out of the ObamaCare marketplace, ObamaCare continues to unravel from within.