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The financial failure of more than half the nonprofit health insurance companies created under the Affordable Care Act has handed Republicans a new weapon in their campaign against the health law, thrown the Obama administration on the defensive once again and left more than a half-million consumers in the cold. “Any start-up faces the inherent risks of building a business from the ground up,” Dr. Mandy Cohen, the chief operating officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told Congress on Tuesday at a contentious hearing of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health. “As with any new set of business ventures, some co-ops have succeeded while others have encountered more challenges.” (Pear, 11/3)

Republicans and Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee traded blame for the mess, which is forcing several hundred thousand people to find new coverage for 2016. Republicans said the taxpayer-financed program exemplifies the problems of "crony capitalism" in which the government backs certain businesses for political purposes. Democrats countered that deep funding cuts forced by the GOP worsened the problems and contributed to the financial instability of many co-ops. (11/3)

More than half of the nonprofit health insurance co-ops formed through the Affordable Care Act are now off the market for the coming year, with the last-minute departure of a plan in Michigan. On Tuesday, two days after the start of the new enrollment season in insurance exchanges created under the health-care law, the Web site of Michigan’s Consumers Mutual Insurance posted notice that it will not sell coverage for 2016. ... The latest gyrations are occurring as the co-ops become new fodder for the partisan acrimony that has surrounded the 2010 law since its beginnings. At a hearing Tuesday afternoon of a House Ways and Means subcommittee, Republicans accused the Obama administration of wasting taxpayers’ money on an aspect of the law that they say is failing. Democrats countered that a series of GOP-forced budget cuts crippled many co-ops’ chances to thrive. (Goldstein, 11/3)

The Obama administration signaled Tuesday that it had nothing up its sleeve to salvage a crumbling network of non-profit insurance coops created under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, to give more choice and less costly policies to consumers. The administration is hoping to keep the remaining dozen out of 23 operational for at least another year. During a House Ways and Means subcommittee hearing that was one part status report and one part post-mortem, Mandy Cohen, the chief operating officer of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which operates Obamacare, said the administration was essentially cutting its losses while keeping close watch on the surviving health insurance co-ops. (Pianin, 11/4)