Despite repeated attempts by Democrats to portray private insurance companies as the bad guys, the industry gets billions in subsidy checks from taxpayers under ObamaCare. In its first three years, ObamaCare will have paid out roughly $88 billion in direct subsidies to insurers to lower the cost of coverage. This year alone, the industry will get $48 billion.
Roughly $11 billion of that money was paid in the form of "cost sharing" subsidies to reduce out-of-pocket costs for very low-income families, payments that U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer ruled were illegal, since Congress never appropriated any money for that particular subsidy.
The administration also diverted -- illegally by some accounts -- $3.5 billion to insurance companies that was supposed to be paid to the Treasury. The money came out of a fee attached to every insurance policy sold.
And this is to say nothing of the $2.4 billion ObamaCare loaned out to create 23 nonprofit co-ops, money that taxpayers are unlikely to recover since all but six of these co-ops have already failed.
