Marco Rubio, Orrin Hatch Want Answers on Obamacare Payments

While most of his focus is on the presidential race, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., teamed up with U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, on Tuesday to demand answers about payments made under President Barack Obama’s federal health-care law. 

Rubio and Hatch wrote U.S. Treasury Sec. Jack Lew and U.S. Health and Human Services Sec. Sylvia Mathews Burwell on reinsurance payments. 

“Under ObamaCare statute section 1341, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is directed to deposit $5 billion into the U.S. Treasury’s general fund,” Rubio’s office noted. “In May 2014, HHS issued guidance in contradiction to the law, saying the secretary ‘will not allocate reinsurance collections to… the U.S. Treasury until the’ insurance companies are bailed out to the full amount allowed.”
 
“This is unacceptable,” Rubio and Hatch wrote. “The statute in question is unambiguous, and the HHS regulation and recent practice violates its clear directive.”