Dear Leader never told them what his “fixer’s” plan was.   Dear Leader never told them “the Fixer’s advice” was to sell short and cut his political losses.   Dear Leader never told them all the work they had done over the past 3 years was going to be dispatched to save his team’s ass.   They never knew, well, because he never gave them a heads’ up, he just did it…..
…. And so now, 24 hours after his announcement, they meet.

How does he approach them? How to sooth the anger?  Why, “The Chicago Way”, with a suitcase, a bribe, full of other peoples money – of course.
After all, it’s the Chicago Way.
WASHINGTON DC VIA NYT – A day after they were caught off guard by President Obama’s proposal to prevent cancellation of insurance policies for millions of Americans, top executives of some of the biggest insurance companies emerged from a meeting at the White House on Friday, expressing mixed feelings about whether the idea could work in every state.
The hastily called meeting was an attempt by the White House to address the growing frustration of the nation’s insurers over the administration’s fumbling of the health care law. It came just a day after the president announced on television that insurers could now continue coverage for people whose policies were being canceled because they did not meet the new law’s standards.
The cancellations had left the president vulnerable to assertions that he had gone back on an often-repeated promise that consumers could keep their current plans if they were happy with them.
Mr. Obama met with chief executives from more than a dozen of the nation’s largest companies in the Roosevelt Room for more than an hour in a session that insurers said was wide-ranging. Other issues discussed included a suggestion being floated by some in the insurance industry that they be allowed to enroll people directly, rather than through HealthCare.gov, the government’s troubled website. But the insurers said the president had agreed that fixing the site’s remaining problems was a critical priority.
The insurers, many of whom expressed anger that the president had not consulted them before Thursday’s announcement, said they had come away from the meeting willing to work with the White House on the cancellation issue and still protect the financial viability of the new insurance marketplaces. They did not discuss in detail how the president’s goal might be achieved.
The participants included executives of WellPoint, Aetna, Cigna, Humana and Kaiser Permanente, as well as several nonprofit Blue Cross plans.
After the meeting, Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry trade group, said only that it had been “very productive.” (read more)
“Very Productive“? Of course it was.   Productive is a very relative term when talking to company executives, but productive always indicates one thing – the successful financial arrangements are soon to be ironed out.
You’ll find the bribe in the final paragraph of the 3 page letter the Administration sent to the insurance companies after he destroyed the financial viability of the Obamacare exchange:

“Though this transitional policy was not anticipated by health insurance issuers when setting rates for 2014, the risk corridor program should help ameliorate unanticipated changes in premium revenue. We intend to explore ways to modify the risk corridor program final rules to provide additional assistance”.

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The CMS guidance / plan as explained to the insurance executives, focuses on using the Obamacare  risk corridor program to compensate insurers for their newly anticipated losses.
The risk corridor program was designed so that the government could shift funds among insurers.   It minimizes losses from carriers with sicker-than-expected enrollees, by redistributing gains from carriers with healthier-than-expected enrollees.
But here’s the kicker, the risk corridor program “doesn’t need to be budget neutral; if the math demands it, the government can pay out more than it collects through the program.”
Look at who surrounds Dear Leader today.   The Fixer on one side, and…

…Seated at the right hand of Dear Leader today you find CMS’s head, Marilyn Tavanner, who implies –quite directly– a plan to undo the concept of budget neutrality,  and instead use it to compensate insurers for their losses.
Now, dontcha feel all better knowing Politico “fixer” McDonough has once again ridden to the defense of Obama, constructed yet another scheme, and once more found a way to use political leverage to financially manipulate private industry – for political gain.
It’s the Chicago Way.
Y’all.