Marco Rubio: Obamacare Bailout 'Isn't Fair to the Taxpayer'

Appearing on the Lars Larson Show on Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., continued to sound the alarm that taxpayers could be on the hook, insisting President Barack Obamas federal health-care law will lead to bailouts of insurance companies.

Rubio led a group of conservative senators in writing U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, warning that Obamacare could lead to bailouts.

Wheres that money going to coming from? Rubio asked on the show. Well, the money is going to come from the taxpayer. Its going to come from you and from me and from American taxpayers to bail out these companies who participated in Obamacare and then are losing money on it.

The point Im making, and the letter that we sent today to Speaker Boehner, is if theyre going to spend taxpayer money, they have to come through Congress to do that because thats appropriated funding, Rubio added. All the applicable agencies that have looked at it agree with us. This cant just be President Obama unilaterally deciding to send them a check. He cant do it, and he shouldnt do it.

Rubio said this situation arose due to changes in the law.

The problem is once they [insurance companies] got into this business, they realized, Hey, this is not as good as we thought. And then the president changed the rules on them, unilaterally, by deciding to waive the employer mandate and let people keep the insurance they had, Rubio said. So now theyre coming back and saying, Hold on, its not working out for us anymore we want to be bailed out with taxpayer money. And I just think thats wrong.

These companies should have folded, and said, Look, sorry. We dont want to participate in the exchange anymore. We were wrong to have supported Obamacare. But no matter what, we should not have to pay for it, Rubio added. We should not be bailing out another group of massive companies like we did banks and others because they have good lobbyists. We just shouldnt.

What bothers me is simple, and that is that the taxpayer is once again on the hook for all of this, Rubio said. What bothers me is I go in the Capitol, and I run into all these lobbyists crawling all over the Capitol fighting on behalf of these insurance companies who want their money. But our job is to fight on behalf of the taxpayer whose money they want. And it isnt fair to the taxpayer.

Now, I think its terrible that some of these companies are going to suffer some losses because they participated in Obamacare," Rubio added. But the taxpayer shouldnt have to pay the price for that.