This is from Seth Chandler, a University of Houston law professor:
... [I]f the CBO is to be believed, the change isn’t due to any earlier error, but due to an administration regulation promulgated by the Obama administration that has resulted in a net of $8 billion more going to insurers. That’s a big change for several reasons. First, it means that the regulatory changes instituted by the Obama administration cost the federal government $8 billion. All of that money went to the insurance industry. And so, in March of 2014, without much fanfare, the Obama administration would in effect have written a check to the insurance industry for $8 billion. That payment would only have been motivated by one thing: a desire to keep insurers pacified and in the Exchanges after having deprived them of perhaps their most healthy potential insureds by a prior administrative ruling – in violation of the ACA — that insurers could keep selling non-compliant policies. The $8 billion would thus have been “damages” paid by the taxpayer in order to permit the President to honor his campaign promise that if you liked your insurance plan you could keep it. ...
