Krauthammer: Insurance Company Bailouts Likely

With all the exemptions to the Affordable Care Act granted by President Barack Obama, insurance companies will pay the price and have to be bailed out by the end of 2014, columnist Charles Krauthammer said Sunday.

The most recent exemption allows people who had their policies cancelled to buy catastrophic insurance – which is supposed to be illegal under Obamacare.

"The reason the insurers are apoplectic about what just happened is because he has now told a whole class of people, 'You don't have to be in the exchanges,'" Krauthammer said on "Fox News Sunday."

Those affected are likely healthier, younger people who were supposed to have been footing the bill.

"And there’s also no way he’s going to be able to hold the line on this because of the unfairness," Krauthammer said.

The whole scenario is "naked unfairness," fellow panelist George Will said. "If you had health insurance and it was cancelled you're preferred. If you didn't have health insurance you can still be punished by the government for not getting it."

Krauthammer agreed, adding, "So you’re going to have an abolition of the individual mandate."

Insurers will be ruined financially, Krauthammer said. The only way out will be a government bailout.

"And that’s an issue that Republicans ought to focus on right now," Krauthammer said. "It's the only way that Obamacare will survive, and it ought to be stopped before it happens."

Congress should deny a bailout, he said, "because this isn’t a natural disaster, it's a manmade disaster."

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