On Monday, a bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus in the House released their list of “solutions” regarding Obamacare. Developed over the past several months, the list can easily be summed up in a single phrase: Single payer.

The lawmakers didn’t come out and say as much, of course, but that would be the net result. In funding more bailout spending for insurers, the proposal clearly states that Obamacare is “too big to fail”—that no amount of taxpayer funding is too great to keep insurers offering coverage on the health exchanges. Enacting that government backstop would create a de facto single-payer health-care system—only with many more well-priced insurer lobbyists around to demand more crony capitalist payments from government to their industry.

Cost-Sharing Reductions

Suppose for a minute that a burglar comes into your house late at night and tries to steal your belongings. Upon apprehending the suspect, the burglar tells you that he only stole your property because he’s hungry and struggling to provide for his family.

In this scenario, how likely would you be just to give the burglar your property, so he could have the resources he needs? Probably not very. On the one hand, that would solve the burglar’s immediate problem, but the burglar broke the law—and ignoring that offense will only encourage future law-breaking.

That’s essentially the scenario facing Obamacare’s cost-sharing reduction payments, meant to subsidize discounted co-payments and deductibles for certain low-income individuals. Obamacare didn’t include an actual appropriation for the payments, so Barack Obama just made one up that didn’t exist. In essence, he stole both the constitutional spending power of Congress and taxpayer funds—recall that spending money without an appropriation is not just a civil, but a criminal, offense—to get Obamacare started.

Yet Congress seems far more worried about propping up Obamacare than holding President Obama to account—focusing solely on the outcomes to individuals, while caring not a whit for the effects on the rule of law. The Problem Solvers Caucus plan includes cost-sharing reduction payments with no accountability for the Obama sdministration’s flagrant violation of the Constitution.

Ironically, Tom Reed (R-NY) and other Republican members of the Problem Solvers Caucus voted in 2014 to authorize the lawsuit that declared the cost-sharing payments unconstitutional last year. But do Reed and his other colleagues actually want to do anything to enforce that lawsuit, and preserve the Constitution that they swore to uphold? Not a chance.

Reinsurance

The Problem Solvers Caucus plan also includes “stability fund” dollars designed to subsidize insurers for covering high-cost Obamacare enrollees. But here again, the proposal throws good money after bad at insurers, creating a new government program after non-partisan auditors concluded that insurers illegally received billions of dollars from the last federal bailout.

Last September, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded that the Obama administration illegally funneled billions of dollars in reinsurance funds to health insurers rather than the U.S. Treasury. After taking in “assessments” (read: taxes) from employers, the text of Obamacare itself requires the government to repay $5 billion to the Treasury (to offset the cost of another Obamacare program) before paying health insurers reinsurance funds.

But when employer “assessments” generated less money than originally contemplated, the Obama administration put insurers’ needs for bailout funds over the law—and taxpayers’ interests. GAO found the Obama administration’s actions violated the law, costing taxpayers billions in the process.

As with the cost-sharing reduction payments, the Problem Solvers Caucus would give insurers even more money, while ignoring the prior illegal—and unconstitutional—acts that benefited health insurers under the Obama regime. In so doing, the Problem Solvers proposal would create another big problem, by incentivizing future presidents to keep breaking the law to advance their political agenda.

Throwing Money at Problems

In general, the Problem Solvers Caucus attempts to solve problems by throwing money at them, by paying tens of billions of dollars (at minimum) to insurers. But as Margaret Thatcher pointed out four decades ago, socialism always runs out of other people’s money—a problem that the proposal wouldn’t solve, but worsen.

The Problem Solvers Caucus proposal amounts to little more than an Obamacare TARP—that’s Turning Against Repeal Promises (or Taking Away Repeal Promises, if you prefer). In abandoning the repeal cause, and setting up a federal backstop for the entire health-care system, the plan would create a de facto single-payer health-care system. Bernie Sanders would be proud.