Rubio’s single-handed ‘Obamacare’ win questioned

Publishable Editors Notes:

EDITOR’S NOTE _ A look at political claims that take shortcuts with the facts or don’t tell the full story.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Florida Sen. Marco Rubio says he’s the only Republican running for president who’s actually notched a win against President Barack Obama’s health care law, widely loathed on the political right.

“Last year, I stopped an Obamacare bailout and saved taxpayers $2.5 billion,” Rubio tweeted earlier this month. The campaign has amplified that claim on Facebook and media interviews.

But other Republicans who quietly worked to outwit the Obama administration say Rubio is taking credit for a victory he didn’t deliver alone. Rubio was in the game, they say, but he didn’t carry the ball on this particular play.

There’s no dispute that Rubio was among the first politicians to criticize the health care law’s “risk corridors” program, which compensates insurers that sign up sicker-than-expected patients and incur high costs. But his proposals to completely repeal risk corridors have gone nowhere in Congress.

While the frontal assault failed, an inside maneuver succeeded but it wasn’t Rubio’s.

The gambit in 2014 restricted the administration’s legal authority to make payments to insurers under the program, designed to help stabilize premiums in the health law’s insurance markets. The restriction was inserted into a massive government spending bill and got little notice.

But it had consequences. As a result, the administration announced this fall the government could pay only $362 million of $2.87 billion in risk corridor claims from insurers for 2014. The industry says the government still owes $2.5 billion.

In a statement Monday evening, campaign spokesman Alex Conant repeated the claim that Rubio “is the only candidate running for president with a signature win against Obamacare that stopped a $2.5 billion taxpayer-funded bailout of health insurance companies.”

“For over a year, Marco sounded the alarm about the bailout that was coming, introduced legislation to stop it, rallied support from conservative organizations and members of Congress, and ultimately succeeded by making it a Republican priority in the spending bill that became law,” Conant said.

But according to interviews and documents, the strategy and legal case for the spending restriction were developed over months of work involving the staffs of Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., and Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich. Upton is chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. At the time, Sessions was the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee.

They also teamed up with former Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., who was chairman of a panel that oversees spending on health care programs.

Asked by The Associated Press who was responsible for the spending restriction, Sessions released a statement earlier Monday that credited his staff, along with the offices of Upton and Kingston. It pointedly omitted Rubio.

“The essential feature of our joint approach was that it did not require the passage of a stand-alone bill,” Sessions said, drawing a contrast with Rubio’s approach to totally repeal risk corridors.

Instead, Sessions added, his approach established that the risk corridor program was legally flawed, lacking its own permanent appropriation, or specific congressional authority, to spend money.

That laid the groundwork “for successfully blocking the illicit transfer of funds in the budget bill,” Sessions said. Without the restrictive language the administration might have been able to shift funds to cover the $2.5 billion shortfall.

Paul Winfree, a former Sessions staffer credited by his boss for uncovering the flaw in the health law, said in an interview that “really, Sen. Rubio’s role in the whole issue was raising awareness of the (risk corridors) program.”

“But most of the work that led to the actual stopping of the bailout wasn’t Rubio,” added Winfree. “That was based on other members.” Winfree now works on economic policy at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

Kingston, now a principal with a major Washington law firm, said he does not remember dealing with Rubio on the risk corridors issue. But he added he thought it was possible Sessions and Rubio could have been working together.

Sessions did sign an Oct. 2014 letter circulated by Rubio to former House Speaker John Boehner, outlining legal concerns about the administration’s authority to make risk corridor payments. That letter was also signed by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a rival to Rubio for the GOP presidential nomination.

Brian Blase, a former Republican staffer with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said Rubio raised concerns but was not solely responsible for the language that tied the administration’s hands on this issue.

“It’s not fair to say he was solely responsible, but it is fair to say he raised the initial concerns,” said Blase, now working on health care policy at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Virginia.

Rubio actually voted against the 2014 spending bill that contained the risk corridors restriction, but so did Sessions and a number of other Senate Republicans. The bill passed.

Rubio has aggressively promoted his risk corridors role on the presidential campaign trail.

In a Fox Business interview earlier this month, Rubio again took full credit. “Last year, I was successful in getting language at the end of the year in the budget bill that took that bailout money away,” he told host Neil Cavuto.

It’s not clear if the damage will be permanent.

Under risk corridors, insurers whose medical claims costs are lower than expected in a given year pay in money to help insurers whose costs are higher. The administration says it will pay outstanding claims with money collected in future years.

If that doesn’t happen, some legal experts say insurers may be able to take the government to court.