A provision of Obamacare that redistributes funds from one insurer to another to cover the extra cost of insuring especially-sick patients has been attacked by Republicans for years.
It's a "bailout" they say. It's "corporate welfare."
You may or may not agree with that assessment, but Republicans are now considering a massive bailout of the health insurance industry necessitated by their boneheaded plan to repeal Obamacare and not replace it.
Repealing Obamacare without replacing it would likely cause the individual insurance market to collapse while a replacement is delayed for several years. Republicans don't want to be held politically responsible for their own fuck ups so they're considering a bailout.
One Republican lobbyist said that in discussions about a plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) without a replacement, insurers are “painting a picture of the market that isn't very pretty and Republican staffers are getting the picture.”
“They want to pump money back in to the insurers without appearing like they’re giving them a handout or bailing them out,” the lobbyist added.
Republicans are considering a bailout for insurers, but they obviously aren't considering a bailout for the average people who will lose their coverage and maybe even die.
This unparalleled display of hypocrisy becomes even more audacious when you consider how they intend to pay for this bailout. The answer is they probably won't pay for it.
Between this, their planned tax cuts and an increase in defense spending, Trump and the GOP are going to spend money like we haven't seen since the George W. Bush administration. Maybe worse.