Supreme Court rules federal government must pay insurance companies billions under Obamacare program

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the federal government will have to pay billions of dollars to health insurance companies that sold Affordable Care Act policies in 2010.

Insurers will be able to seek the money from the government under the ACA, also called Obamacare, created to offset financial risks for insurance companies that were encouraged to sell the health-care polices as prices consumers would accept.

Not as many healthy people ended up participating in the Obamacare exchanges as the government has expected, which led to large financial losses for the insurance companies. The insurance industry argued to the Supreme Court that the government is legally obligated to reimburse companies that fared poorly on the exchanges.