2 Days After Benghazi, Back to Fundraising

Posted on March 22, 2016March 22, 2016 by Denise Simon

Judicial Watch: New Clinton Documents Raise Questions on Benghazi, Clinton Foundation

Two days after Benghazi attack, Libyan president sought meeting with Bill Clinton through Clinton Foundation event

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released 276 pages of internal State Department documents revealing that within two days of the deadly terrorist attack on Benghazi, Mohamed Yusuf al-Magariaf, the president of Libya’s National Congress, asked to participate in a Clinton Global Initiative function and “meet President Clinton.” The meeting between the Libyan president and Bill Clinton had not previously been disclosed. The documents also show Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s staff coordinated with the Clinton Foundation’s staff to have her thank Clinton Global Initiative project sponsors for their “commitments” during a Foundation speech on September 25, 2009.

The Judicial Watch documents were obtained as a result of a federal court order in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed against the State Department on May 28, 2013, (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:13-cv-00772)).

In September 13, 2012, al-Magariaf advisor Dr. Fathi Nuah wrote to the Clinton Foundation’s Director of Foreign Policy Amitabh Desai: “Dr. Almagariaf will be addressing the United Nations this September in New York as the Libyan Head of State, and he expressed a wish to meet President Clinton and to participate at the Clinton Global Initiative meeting for New York as well.”

Four hours later, Desai emailed Hillary Clinton’s Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills asking, “Would USG [U.S. Government] have concerns about Libyan President being invited to CGI [Clinton Global Initiative]? Odd timing, I know.” Mills emailed back: “We would not have issues.”

Four days later, on September 17, Desai emailed Mills again, saying, The Libyan president is “asking for a meeting with WJC [William Jefferson Clinton] next week.” Desai asked, “Would you recommend accepting or declining the WJC meeting request?”

The State Department apparently had no objection to the meeting, because on September 26, Desai emailed Mills, “He had a v good meeting with Libya …” Hillary Clinton and al-Magariaf did not have a meeting until September 24.

An August 2009 email chain including Hillary Clinton’s then- Chief of Staff Huma Abedin, Mills, then-Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Jake Sullivan shows that the State Department coordinated with Clinton Foundation staff on how Mrs. Clinton to thank Foundation supporters/partners for their “commitments.” Mills asks Desai for a “list of commitments during whole session so she can reference more than those just around her speech.”

Caitlin Klevorick, Senior Advisor to the Counselor and Chief of Staff to the Secretary of State who previously worked at the Foundation, notes: “one question is if we want to see if there is a decent mass of fs [funds] related commitments to announce together at closing as a ‘mega’ commitment.”

The State Department material includes background information made by Clinton Foundation partners, which include Foundation donors Nduna Foundation, Grupo ABCA, and Britannia Industries. Other CGI partners noted in the State Department documents include a federal agency (the Centers for Disease Control) and various United Nations entities, which also receive U.S. taxpayer funds.

The transcript of Hillary Clinton’s speech on the State Department Internet site confirms that then-Secretary of State did thank those making “exceptional commitments” to her husband’s foundation:

And so I congratulate all who helped to put on this (inaudible) CGI [Clinton Global Initiative]. I especially thank you for having a separate track on girls and women, which I think was well received for all the obvious reasons. (Applause.) And this is an exceptional gathering of people who have made exceptional commitments to bettering our world.

The documents also point to a chain of emails that show Haim Saban, a top Clinton donor, sought to entice Bill Clinton into to travelling to Damascus in 2009 to meet with a high-level Syrian delegation. The meetings were part of the Saban Forum. Evidently, the trip never took place.

As previously reported, a June 2012 email chain discusses a “firm invitation for President Clinton” to speak at a Congo conference, hosted in part by the controversial Joseph Kabila. Bill Clinton is offered $650,000 in fees and expenses, concerning which, as Desai emails Mills and others, “WJC wants to know that state [sic] thinks of it if he took it 100% for the foundation.”

This lawsuit had previously forced the disclosure of documents that provided a road map for over 200 conflict-of-interest rulings that led to at least $48 million in speaking fees for the Clintons during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State. Previously disclosed documents in this lawsuit, for example, raise questions about funds Clinton accepted from entities linked to Saudi Arabia, China and Iran, among others.

Judicial Watch’s litigation to obtain these conflict of interest records is ongoing. The State Department has also yet to explain why it failed to conduct a proper, timely search in the 20 months between when it received Judicial Watch’s request on May 2, 2011, and the February 1, 2013, date Secretary Clinton left office.

“These new State Department documents show Hillary Clinton and her State aides were involved in fundraising for the Clinton Foundation. It is also incredible that the Libyan president would call and meet Bill Clinton through the Clinton Foundation before meeting Hillary Clinton about Benghazi,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Secretary of State Hillary Clinton worked hand in glove with the Clinton Foundation on fundraising and foreign policy. Despite the law and her promises to the contrary, Hillary Clinton turned the State Department into the DC office of the Clinton Foundation.”

Judicial Watch’s FOIA lawsuit has become particularly noteworthy because it has been reported that the Clinton Foundation, now known as the Bill, Hillary, & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, accepted millions of dollars from at least seven foreign governments while Mrs. Clinton served as Secretary of State. The Clinton Foundation has acknowledged that a $500,000 donation it received from the government of Algeria while Mrs. Clinton served as Secretary of State violated a 2008 ethics agreement between the foundation and the Obama administration. Some of the foreign governments that have made donations to the Clinton Foundation include Algeria, Kuwait, Qatar, and Oman, have questionable human rights records.

Links to the full production of documents can be found here.

Judge to WH: Unseal Records of Trump Business Partner?

Posted on March 21, 2016March 21, 2016 by Denise Simon

This site has published articles here and here about Felix Sater, a mafia linked frauster that is/was a partner of Donald Trump. It seems this unsavory character is known to many in New York and Washington DC including Attorney General, Loretta Lynch as well as Senator Jeff Sessions. Seems some interesting powers are working phones to determine future damage to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee and others with their fingerprints on the matter.

Judge Wants US to Protect Trump Associate’s Secret History

ABC: A U.S. judge is urging the Obama administration to protect from public disclosure federal court records related to the once-secret criminal history of a former Donald Trump business partner.

In a highly unusual order prompted by The Associated Press, U.S. District Judge Brian M. Cogan said that unless the Justice Department acts before April 18, he will decide whether to make the court files public under the assumption that federal prosecutors don’t care.

The case involves Felix Sater, a Trump business associate who had pleaded guilty in a major Mafia-linked stock fraud scheme and cooperated with the government. The AP reported in December that, even after learning about Sater’s background, Trump tapped Sater for a business development role in 2010 that included the title of senior adviser to Trump. Sater received Trump Organization business cards and was given an office within the Trump Organization’s headquarters, on the same floor as Trump’s own.

“It seems to me that the government has a unique interest in keeping documents that relate to cooperation agreements under seal,” the judge wrote in his order. “The government should speak and assert its position as to whether the public’s right to access each document in the record is outweighed by a compelling need for secrecy.”

Lawyers for the AP had asked the judge to justify sealing a five-year criminal contempt proceeding in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

Not only did Cogan seal all documents in the contempt case, he also initially sealed the AP’s request that he unseal his justification for their sealing. When The New York Times asked the judge to unseal the AP’s request to unseal the sealing order, that request was sealed, too. Late last week, he made the requests by the AP and the newspaper publicly accessible — but ordered that the parties to the case file any response to them under seal.

The defendants in the contempt case, Frederick Oberlander and Richard Lerner, are attorneys whom the government said revealed once-secret court records about Sater’s crimes and cooperation. Sater’s lawyers, who once included Leslie Caldwell, now the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, have said that Sater’s cooperation was vital to national security and disclosures about his past put him in danger.

Oberlander and Lerner said they never revealed sealed records. Some of what they had been ordered not to disclose is already publicly available in the Congressional Record, they said.

“We wish that people could inspect the documents, because it would reveal judicial and prosecutorial misconduct of the highest levels,” Oberlander told the AP.

Also at issue in the case are statements that U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch — formerly the top prosecutor in Cogan’s district — made about Sater’s case before the Senate confirmed her last year. Oberlander and Lerner said the government improperly permitted Sater to use his status as a secret cooperator to commit new crimes and avoid paying restitution to past victims, who are owed millions of dollars.

In February 2015, Lynch told Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, of the Senate Judiciary Committee that information about Sater’s restitution “remains under seal,” and that the Justice Department would never waive victims’ right to restitution as part of a cooperation agreement. Court records already publicly available at the time showed that Sater was not ordered to pay restitution and the government never requested it. One of Sater’s attorneys said in a statement at the time that the government had waived restitution payments partly out of gratitude to Sater.

A Justice Department spokeswoman, Melanie Newman, told the AP that Lynch’s comments were accurate because some documents related to restitution in Sater’s case remain under seal.

Oberlander told the AP that the original cooperation agreement Sater signed in 1998, which has been publicly available since 2013, said Sater acknowledged that the penalty for his crime included roughly $60 million in restitution payments to victims.

The New York judge has twice asked the Justice Department to pursue contempt charges against the two lawyers who revealed Sater’s cooperation. In both cases, local federal prosecutors recused themselves over unspecified conflicts of interest after consulting with Justice Department officials in Washington. They referred the case to federal prosecutors in Albany, New York, who likewise did not act.

In his latest order, Cogan again urged prosecutors to go after Oberlander and Lerner.

“One would think that the desire to ensure that further informants cooperate in government investigations should also motivate the government to take swift action against individuals who seek to expose the identity of informants, their proffered criminal history and the details of their cooperation,” the judge wrote.

Sater’s attorney, Robert Wolf, said the judge was right.

“Mr. Sater shares and supports the court’s frustration and outrage as to why these rogue lawyers have not yet been criminally prosecuted,” Wolf said in a statement. He credited Sater with providing information that “potentially saved tens of thousands, if not millions, of our citizens’ lives.”

Sater pleaded guilty in 1998 to one count of racketeering for his role in a broad stock fraud scheme involving the prominent Genovese and Bonanno crime families, according to court records. Five years earlier, a New York State court had sentenced Sater to more than a year in prison for stabbing a man in the face with a broken margarita glass.

Cuba: Where is Barack and the Pope on This?

Posted on March 20, 2016March 20, 2016 by Denise Simon

Traveling with a delegation of about 80, Barack Obama has arrived in Cuba, something no sitting president has done since Calvin Coolidge. It is not clear who Obama will have meetings with, but his first stop was the recently fully opened U.S. embassy.

Meanwhile, there are real things going on in Havana that many are ignoring especially media and the entire diplomatic delegation. Obama calls this a new day in relations but it is hardly so when it comes to human rights.

The Pope played a large role in re-starting talks but it all began in earnest at the Nelson Mandela funeral.

The average salary for Cubans is $20.00 USD per month. All monies that flow into the island have two destinations, the Castro regime and the military.

Facts about Cuba: Venezuela ships 100,000 barrels of oil to Cuba a day. Only a few years ago, Putin forgave $32 billion in Cuban debt. Cuba has a long history of human rights violations such that John Kerry’s advance trip, ahead of Obama’s was cancelled due to major disputes with diplomatic personnel. Cuba’s military is known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces and all people between the ages of 17-28 have mandatory service.

Russia has an intelligence and spy base in Lourdes, Cuba as does China which is located in Bejucal, Cuba. Both of these bases spy on telecom transmissions, phone, satellite ad internet.

Chinese telecommunications spybase in Bejucal, Cuba Bejucal Lourdes

Meanwhile……

Violent Arrests of Pro-Democracy Activists Precede Obama Landing in Cuba

Hours before President Barack Obama landed in Havana to meet with high-ranking members of the island’s repressive communist regime, more than 50 pro-democracy dissidents were beaten and arrested, shoved into buses to be shipped into the nation’s jails to prevent them from disturbing official activities.

Breitbart: At least 50 of those arrested are members of the Ladies in White, a mostly-Catholic dissident group comprised of the wives, daughters, mothers, and sisters of prisoners of conscience. The Ladies in White members joined a larger group of anti-communist dissidents in Havana following their weekly attendance at Mass. Service this Sunday is especially important to Catholics as they celebrate Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week.

“It was brutal, there are people with fractures and contusions,” Antonio Rodiles, leader of the dissident group Estado de SATS, told the Spain-based Diario de Cuba. “They hit us with everything.” The newspaper notes that Rodiles spoke to them via telephone, and the chaos of mass arrests happening around him threatened to drown out his own voice on the phone. Rodiles was subsequently arrested.

In addition to the 50 members of the Ladies in White and Antonio Rodiles, Danilo Maldonado, an artist known as “El Sexto,” was arrested in the fray.

***

Maldonado was recently released from prison after serving a ten-month sentence for painting the names “Fidel” and “Raúl” on the backs of two pigs for an Animal Farm-themed art project.

The protesters all carried signs and chanted slogans directed at President Obama, calling for him to reconsider his friendly stance towards dictator Raúl Castro. The Ladies in White marched holding a sign reading “Obama, Nothing Has Changed Here.” Another group of dissidents held a sign reading “Obama, traveling to Cuba is not fun. No more violations of human rights.”

While Sunday’s arrests yielded much more dramatic images due to the unusually high number of media representatives on the island for President Obama’s visit, there is evidence that the communist government has been working all week to keep the nation’s most vocal opponents of communism silent. On Saturday, a man named Ciro Alexis Casanova Pérez was arrested for placing a sign on his window reading “Neither Obama nor Castro, Freedom for Cuba.” He was taken to the hospital after his arrest for severe body aches, a sign he was beaten by police during his arrest.

Pérez was among more than 200 arrested yesterday, according to Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) leader José Daniel Ferrer, who attested to the arrest of 209 members of his group in Oriente, the eastern end of Cuba. In contrast, the Cuban government arrested about 250 dissidents throughout the entirety of Pope Francis’ visit in September.

In addition to those taken to jail, at least one is being held under house arrest without charge. The man: Zaqueo Báez, who made international headlines in September for daring to approach Pope Francis’ vehicle in Havana and say the word “freedom” within earshot of the pontiff. Báez was beaten severely in front of the pope and taken to prison, facing criminal charges for disturbing the peace. Pope Francis later denied any knowledge of the incident despite his proximity to it.

The Cuban dissident community has loudly opposed President Obama’s visit, arguing that his presence on the island would embolden the Cuban government to act more violently against pro-democracy activists. “These sorts of visits bring a lot of collateral damage,” dissident Marta Beatriz Roque said in February.

Studies of Castro regime behavior following President Obama’s announcement in December 2017 that he would be establishing diplomatic ties with the Castro dictatorship show that Havana has become more oppressive and violent against those who demand to live in a democratic society. “There has been no substantial improvement in regard to human rights and individual freedoms on the island… [The Cuban government] has adapted its repressive methods in order to make them invisible to the scrutinizing, judgmental eyes of the international community, but it has not reduced the level of pressure or control over the opposition,” a report by the Czech NGO People in Need concluded in December.

$500 Million State Dept Climate Change Collusion

Posted on March 14, 2016March 14, 2016 by Denise Simon

Senators accuse State Dept. of defying Congress with $500M UN climate payment

FNC: Two Republican senators are accusing the State Department of misusing taxpayer dollars by green-lighting $500 million for a United Nations climate change program without first obtaining congressional approval.

The senators now are demanding the department justify the “cloak-and-dagger” contribution to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) – even threatening legal action.

“Lawyers cannot replace the constitutional requirement that only Congress can appropriate money,” Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., said, adding that he’s demanding a “full legal analysis.”

Gardner, in a statement to FoxNews.com, alleged the department was trying to “wave a magic wand and write a half-billion dollar check to a Green Climate Fund that they admit was never authorized by Congress.”

He also vowed to “pursue legislative action that prevents cloak-and-dagger re-programming of money outside of congressional approval.”

At the center of the dispute is whether the State Department abused its authority in shifting funds between an existing program and the climate fund.

The Obama administration – despite resistance from congressional Republicans — has committed the U.S. to contributing $3 billion to the fund, a program established by the United Nations to help poor countries adopt clean energy technologies to address climate change. Nearly 200 other nations have agreed to provide $100 billion per year by 2020, from private and public sources.

Along with Gardner, Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., maintains Congress has not allocated any funding for what he calls the “international climate change slush fund” and has in fact “prohibited the transfer of funds to create new programs.”

The State Department acknowledges the funding was never explicitly approved by Congress – but argues the department was within its authority to shift funding to the Green Climate Fund, because Congress did not explicitly prohibit funding the GCF.

Under questioning by Barrasso at a March 8 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Heather Higginbottom told the committee the funds were diverted from the department’s Economic Support Fund — which provides economic funding to foreign countries — to the GCF after a full review by department lawyers.

State Department spokeswoman Katherine Pfaff also confirmed to FoxNews.com the source of the funding was the economic fund, but could not say from which exact program the money came.

And she bluntly addressed the GOP senators’ accusation. “Did Congress authorize the Green Climate Fund? No,” she said, adding that department lawyers “reviewed the authority and the process under which we can do it.”

The administration, meanwhile, has requested another $750 million for the GCF in its fiscal 2017 budget.

Higginbottom also insisted they were not required to notify Congress about the transfer from the Economic Support Fund.

At the hearing, though, Barrasso said the first installment of the $3 billion pledge was “a blatant misuse of taxpayer dollars.”

Barrasso said because the GCF technically is a new program and not authorized by Congress, the department may have violated the Anti-Deficiency Act, a law that prohibits federal agencies from obligating or expending funds in advance or in excess of an appropriation.

According to Politico, Barrasso is prepared to go to court over the issue and to seek prosecution of individuals if they are found to have violated the Anti-Deficiency Act.

The Wyoming senator’s communications director, Bronwyn Lance Chester, confirmed to FoxNews.com that “all options are being considered.”

The department may have been able to effectively use a loophole to contribute the money – namely, because Congress did not include specific language barring spending to the GCF. Analysts say this dispute could have been avoided if Congress had simply included a specific prohibition on spending for the climate fund.

“The problem is that the horse has already left the barn. There was not a specific line item in the budget prohibiting spending on the GCF. I am sure [State Department lawyers] have come up with some creative way to fund it, but it would not be an issue if Congress had explicitly prohibited it,” said H. Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow with the Heartland Institute.

Senate Republicans backed away from including a specific rider in last year’s omnibus bill after President Obama threatened to veto if such a rider were included.

“They were gutless,” said Burnett, who noted the first installment is a “drop in the bucket” when compared with the $3 billion.

Because the omnibus spending bill was silent on the GCF, the White House argued this left the door open for the administration to fund the U.N. program. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said in December “there are no restrictions in our ability to make good on the president’s promise to contribute to the Green Climate Fund.”

Gardner and Barrasso also were signatories to a letter sent last year to Obama asserting the deal reached at a United Nations climate change conference in Paris, including the $100 billion-a-year Green Climate Fund, must be submitted to Congress for approval before any funding could be made.

Obamacare Causes a $1.5 Billion Flop in Chicago

Posted on March 14, 2016March 14, 2016 by Denise Simon

Blue Cross parent lost $1.5 billion on individual health plans last year

ChicagoTribune: Year 2 of the Affordable Care Act was another financial flop for the Chicago-based parent of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois but hints of a turnaround are emerging.

Health Care Service Corp.’s financial losses in its individual business, which includes ACA plans, worsened in 2015. The company, which owns Blue Cross affiliates in Illinois and four other states, said it lost $1.5 billion in its individual business, up from $767 million in 2014, the first year of the health law’s state exchanges for buying coverage.

In anticipation of ACA-related losses in 2015, HCSC set aside nearly $400 million in 2014 to boost reserves to $680.9 million. The company spent $657.3 million of those reserves to cover the medical expenses associated with ACA plans in 2015.

HCSC is the latest large insurer to report losses on 2015 ACA business, a troubling sign for the state exchanges that are the heart of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul. The far-reaching legislation has increased access to insurance coverage by expanding Medicaid and providing tax credits to subsidize the cost of insurance. Though the law has brought new customers to many insurers, much of that growth has been unprofitable, reflecting higher-than-expected medical expenses, regulatory challenges and unexpected shortfalls in federal risk-sharing programs.

UnitedHealthcare said it had losses of about $475 million on its 2015 ACA business. Aetna didn’t break out the loss on its individual health plans but said the operating losses on that line of business were 3 to 4 percent of the sales.

As a result of the losses, some insurers have considered withdrawing from the state marketplaces. Any exodus would threaten the stability of exchanges, making the online marketplaces less attractive to consumers.

“2015 was not a good year as far as the ACA went,” said Stephen Zaharuk, senior vice president at Moody’s Investors Service, who covers the health insurance industry. “Insurers had no idea what to expect.”

Still, no one expected the rollout of some of the biggest reforms in health care to be smooth. The exchanges are a new way to sell health plans to a population that largely was uninsured. Moreover, the law forbids insurers from using consumers’ medical history to set prices. Insurers were essentially groping in the dark.

But with two years of experience under their belts, insurers may be on more secure footing. HCSC, for one, didn’t book a reserve for potential 2016 losses on ACA plans, said Carl McDonald, a divisional senior vice president at the company. Zaharuk said that’s a good sign the company’s individual business may break even this year.

But HCSC officials are not so optimistic that the ACA plans will be profitable in 2016. Company spokesman Greg Thompson said in an email, “Our not booking a (reserve for ACA losses) for 2016 does not indicate nor imply an anticipated level of profitability for the year.”

Despite problems with its ACA-related business, HCSC narrowed its overall loss in 2015, according to a financial statement filed with the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. The filing is primarily an accounting of its fully insured lines of business.

The company reported a loss of $65.8 million, down from $281.9 million in 2014, reflecting higher earnings from its group health plans and an increase in investment income. Premium revenue rose 12.5 percent to $31.2 billion.

HCSC is among the biggest players in the individual market, with 1.64 million members at the end of last year, an increase of 3.4 percent, according to the filing. Nearly one-third of its enrollment is in Illinois, where Blue Cross sold roughly 80 percent of all 2015 individual policies in the state.

HCSC doesn’t disclose how much of its individual enrollment came from ACA plans sold on and off the exchanges. The individual market also includes policyholders who were allowed to keep the plans they had before the health law was implemented through 2017. Insurers blame that last-minute change by the Obama administration for keeping healthier people out of the exchanges.

When the exchanges launched, HCSC’s Blue Cross plans offered some of the lowest-priced policies and largest provider networks. The strategy was to provide cost-effective health care access, reflecting the company’s status as a not-for-profit, customer-owned insurer, analysts said.

However, medical costs and customers’ use of health care services on ACA-related plans were higher than anticipated. In 2014, HCSC’s key medical-loss ratio, which measures the share of premiums used to pay patient medical costs, rose to 86.5 percent, from 85 percent. Last year, the ratio jumped to 90.4 percent, according to the annual statement.

To manage the risk, HCSC followed in the footsteps of its for-profit competitors and made significant changes last year that were not consumer friendly.

The company raised 2016 premiums and redesigned policies to shift more costs to consumers. In Illinois and Texas, its two largest markets, HCSC eliminated its popular PPO plans that were more expensive but had the largest networks of hospitals and doctors. The decision sent Blue Cross customers scrambling to find other plans on the exchanges that included their doctors.

The company even took the hard line of walking away from business. In New Mexico, the company sought a rate increase averaging 51.6 percent, after it said it lost $19.2 million in 2014 on its individual business in the state. New Mexico insurance regulators rejected the request but were willing to approve a lower increase, according to published reports. Instead, HCSC pulled out of the New Mexico exchange.

The company also is cutting expenses. Thompson confirmed that HCSC has laid off employees in its information-technology department but declined to say how many were let go. Last month, the company eliminated commissions to independent brokers in Illinois, Texas and Oklahoma on sales of individual plans that take effect April 1 or later.

After eliminating commissions in Illinois, Blue Cross said it remains committed to “expanding access to quality health care to as many people as possible.” The changes are necessary to continue offering “sustainable” health plan options to members, the company said.

Despite signs of strain, the Obama administration says the exchanges are getting stronger. There were many new customers among the 12.7 million people who chose plans during open enrollment for 2016. In Illinois, enrollment grew nearly 12 percent to about 388,000.

Still, the administration has tweaked some regulations to benefit insurers. It placed a one-year moratorium for 2017 on the annual tax insurers pay, which is generally passed along to customers. The change will save some insurers hundreds of millions of dollars. For 2016, HCSC expects to pay a fee of $538.7 million.

The administration also has tightened some of the eligibility rules for people who sign up for insurance after the enrollment deadlines. Insurers have complained that people are waiting until they are sick to buy plans and then dropping coverage after their health problems are resolved, driving up costs and premiums.