Note that this is not the state Obamacare exchange itself: Nevada Health Co-Op was set up to be a competitor to actual, honest-to-God insurance companies.  Sixty-six million dollars of your tax money later, it’s blown up in the Obama administration’s face: “Nevada Health CO-OP, which launched in 2012 with two federal loans totaling $65.9 million, will shutter its operation and will not offer coverage for 2016.” Which means that anybody who signed up for a program with Nevada Health is going to get a special Christmas gift from the administration: several weeks of desperately trying to arrange new coverage during the holiday season!  Yay!

Mind you, the taxpayers can’t just write Nevada Health off right away.  The organization is apparently rather significantly in debt, and paying that off will probably cost the taxpayer more… what? Why would the taxpayers have to make good the co-op’s bad loans? Well…

Nevada Health CO-OP started in 2012 as Hospitality Health CO-OP. It was sponsored by the Culinary Union’s Culinary Health Fund, its national parent UNITE HERE Health and the Health Services Coalition, a local consumer advocacy group that negotiates costs and tracks care for more than 300,000 members employed by cities, unions and big companies.

Unions still play a key role in the co-op: Culinary head D. Taylor and Nevada AFL-CIO executive Danny Thompson are both listed on the nonprofit’s board of directors in its June 30 financial statement.

Let me put it this way.  In this corner, we have Joe and Jane Average Taxpayer. And over in this corner, we have the AFL-CIO. Which corner contains the people that this administration doesn’t want to annoy? …That’s right: Big Labor. Even in its currently bruised state the labor movement still commands strong respect from the other members of our current Imperial Court; and why should loyal clients be forced to spend their own* money when the treasury is right there, just waiting to be tapped?

And as always, remember: this is not a flaw in the system. This is the system. Although I should note that the Obama administration is so bad at this that it can’t even provide largess for its friends…

Via @baseballcrank.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Well, their members’ money, in the form of membership dues.