Category Archives: Treasury

New Dynamic with Iran and Russia

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Iran shows underground ballistic missile launch base

IHS: Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has provided additional insight into how its underground ballistic missile launch bases work by allowing a TV news crew to film inside one such facility.

The news crew also filmed a ballistic missile being launched from the underground facility. This footage showed terrain that IHS Jane’s has been able to match to a base just south of the city of Jam in Bushehr province.

Broadcast by Islamic Republic of Iran News Network (IRINN) on 8 March, the footage showed a Qiam ballistic missile erected inside a large launch chamber with a circular aperture at the top and a flame trench below to manage the missile’s exhaust in the confined space. The launch chamber was sealed from the rest of the underground facility by large blast doors.

The Qiam appeared to be on a version of the erector-launcher mechanism carried by Iran’s mobile ballistic missile launchers.

There was no overhead gantry for loading the missiles inside the launch chamber and the erector-launcher appeared to have small wheels and hydraulic stabilisers, suggesting it is loaded elsewhere in the facility and then wheeled into the launch chamber. The hydraulic stabilisers are presumably lowered once it is over the fire trench to fix it in position for the launch.

This would allow a higher rate of fire than if a static system was used, as missiles could be prepared on multiple erector-launchers that are wheeled in and out of the chamber for the launches.

Satellite imagery of the Jam facility suggests it has two underground launch chambers that are 190 m from each other.

If all the IRINN footage was filmed at the same location, then the Jam facility also supports mobile transporter-erector-launchers (TELs).

Dozens of missiles could be seen stored in tunnels, including longer-range Ghadr types that are too tall to erect inside the underground launch chamber.

A showdown in the future may be coming that puts the United States at odds versus Iran and Russia. Iran and Russia have a new plan for an oil and gas swap.

Iran urges progress on oil and gas swap with Russia

Zanganeh also told the ISNA that his country’s oil exports will rise to 2 million bpd in the month ending March 20, a slight increase from February’s 1.75 million bpd.

“Iran made it clear that it only intends to sign up to the oil production cap once it has reached a production level of 4 million barrels a day”, analysts at Commerzbank AG led by Eugen Weinberg said in a report.

An expected downturn in Us crude oil production through 2016 helped push crude oil prices higher last week, sending Brent above $40 per barrel for the first time this year. Not too long. It’s now ramped up production to somewhere between 2.8 million barrels per day and 3.5 million barrels per day.

Even with the proposed freeze, continuously high production means global output still exceeds demand by at least 1 million barrels per day (bpd).

Both crude and Brent oil have tumbled again after the killed all hopes in joining Saudi Arabia, Russia, Qatar, and Venezuela to freeze oil production.

CENTCOM commander warns of Russia-Iran alliance

IHS: There are signs that Iran and Russia are forging a strategic partnership that threatens to further destabilise the Middle East, according to General Lloyd Austin, the commander of US Central Command (CENTCOM).

Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) announced on 8 March that it had launched two Ghadr ballistic missiles during its ‘Eqtedar-e Velayat’ exercise. The move was the latest showing the IRGC has no intention of slowing its missile programmes after the nuclear deal was signed last year. Source: Fars News Agency

In his testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee on 8 March, Gen Austin said, “Russia’s co-operation with Iran appears to be expanding beyond near-term co-ordination for operations in Syria and is moving towards an emerging strategic partnership.” He described “a more traditional security co-operation arrangement” between Russia and Iran is “cause for significant concern”.

Gen Austin said Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad would “certainly not be in power today were it not for the robust support” provided by Russia and Iran.

While he recognised that the Russians have tipped the balance in favour of Assad, he noted that they might be failing to achieve their objectives in Syria. “My assumption is they wanted to make a substantial difference as fast as possible and transition to something else very quickly. They have not been able to do that and I think they are finding out that this could go on for some time,” he said.

He outlined the wider implications of Moscow’s support for an alliance that includes Iran, the Syrian government, and the Lebanese group Hizbullah. “Russia’s involvement in Syria exacerbates sectarian tensions as it appears they are supporting the Shiite states against the Sunnis,” he said.

He described Iran as still having “hegemonic ambitions” in the region despite the implementation of the nuclear deal agreed last year and called it a greater mid- to long-term threat than the Islamic State group.

As evidence of the emerging Iran-Russia strategic partnership, Gen Austin said there are already “indications of high-end weapon sales and economic co-operation between the two countries”.

The only defence deal that has been announced so far is Iran’s order of Russian S-300 long-range air defence systems, but Iranian officials have expressed interest in Su-30SM multirole fighters and there have been reports that Iran may also want T-90 tanks, helicopters, and the Bastion-P coastal anti-ship missile system.

Obama, He Freed Them and They Kill

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How about next we pass a law in Congress, that it is against the law not to follow and apply the law? Imagine the government savings….and especially the lives saved….

Free to Kill: 124 Criminal Aliens Released By Obama Policies Charged with Homicide Since 2010

Vaughn, CIS: In response to congressional inquiries, ICE has released information on some of the criminal aliens who have been released by the agency since 2010. Specifically, ICE provided information on aliens who were charged with homicides after being released and aliens who were released multiple times by ICE.

The criminal aliens released by ICE in these years — who had already been convicted of thousands of crimes — are responsible for a significant crime spree in American communities, including 124 aliens charged with 135 new homicides. Inexplicably, ICE is choosing to release some criminal aliens multiple times.

Only a tiny percentage of the released criminals have been removed — most receive the most generous forms of due process available, and are allowed to remain at large, without supervision, while they await drawn-out immigration hearings. They are permitted to take advantage of this inefficient processing even though they are more likely to re-offend than they are to be granted legal status.

There is a human cost to the Obama administration’s careless catch and release policies for criminal aliens, euphemistically known as “prioritization”. These policies have led to 124 new homicides since 2010, and thousands of other crimes that harm citizens and degrade the quality of life in American communities.

124 Aliens Charged With Homicide After Release Since 2010

A total of 121 criminal aliens who were freed by ICE over the five-year period between 2010 and 2014 were subsequently charged with homicide-related crimes within that time frame. (Three more were charged in 2015; see below.) These 121 accused murderers were associated with 250 different communities in the United States, with the most clustered in California, New York and Texas.

 

Source: ICE information provided to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee
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Some aliens had multiple zip codes associated with them in ICE’s system, so the records include more zip codes than the 121 individual criminal aliens charged through 2014. (Three more were charged in 2015; ICE did not provide their zip codes.)

These aliens were charged with a total of 135 homicide-related crimes after release. Two of them had homicide-related convictions even before they were released.

These aliens had 464 criminal convictions prior to release by ICE, ranging from drug crimes to DUI and other driving offenses to larceny and theft.

Another three aliens who were released by ICE during that time were charged with homicides during the first 10 months of FY2015, bring the total number of criminals aliens released by ICE who subsequently were charged with homicide to 124.

This tally does not include aliens who were released by sanctuary jurisdictions, nor those aliens that were released by local law enforcement agencies after ICE declined to take them into custody due to Obama administration prioritization policies. This list includes only those aliens that ICE arrested and then released.

The names of the criminal aliens were redacted by the Judiciary Committee, but the list presumably includes murderers like Apolinar Altamirano, an illegal alien who was arrested by ICE in 2013 following his conviction on local charges involving a burglary and abduction, but who was released on a $10,000 bond and permitted to remain free and elect to have deportation proceedings that would take years to complete. In January 2015 Altamirano shot and killed 21-year-old Grant Ronnebeck while he was working at a convenience store where Altamirano had come to buy cigarettes.

Aliens Released By ICE on Multiple Occasions Since 2013 Commit Hundreds of New Crimes

ICE reported that there are 156 criminal aliens who were released at least twice by ICE since 2013. Between them, these criminals had 1,776 convictions before their first release in 2013, with burglary, larceny, and drug possession listed most frequently.

The vast majority (124) of these criminal aliens were released in California. In addition, 16 were released in Arizona, six in Texas, three in Florida, two in Georgia, and one each in North Carolina, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Washington, and Oregon.

These criminal aliens racked up a total of 243 additional convictions after being freed by ICE. The largest number (24) were for drunk or drugged driving, but they also included drug offenses, burglary, theft and larceny, and sex offenses.

ICE further disclosed that 47 of the recidivist aliens who were released at least twice had since been charged with an additional 106 crimes since their most recent release. So far, 20 have been convicted of crimes including burglary, dangerous drugs, DUI, fraud, and assault on a police officer.

Why Were They Released?

ICE has previously disclosed that 75 percent of the homicidal criminal aliens were released due to court orders, including the so-called Zadvydas cases, in which the alien’s home country would not take them back. The rest were released by ICE’s choice.

Of the 156 recidivists that ICE released at least twice, fewer than half (67) were released because their home country would not take them back, 16 were released on bond by an immigration judge, and 73 were released by ICE’s choice. ICE says it tried to contest only one of the releases ordered by an immigration judge — meaning that ICE essentially consented to more than half of these releases.

Of the 156, a total of 88 were released under “supervision”, 40 were released on bond, and 28 were released on an order of recognizance (without supervision).

In a separate communication, ICE provided a list of the countries that currently are uncooperative in accepting their deported citizens: Afghanistan, Algeria, Burundi, Cape Verde, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, India, Iran, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, and Zimbabwe.

Criminal Aliens Released in 2014 Were Convicted of 2,560 New Crimes

In 2014, ICE released a total of 30,558 criminal aliens from its custody. These aliens had already been convicted of 92,347 crimes before they were released by ICE.

As of July 25, 2015, a total of 1,895 aliens have been charged with a crime after being freed by ICE. As of that date, 1,607 aliens had been convicted of a crime after being freed by ICE. The total number of new crimes for which these aliens were convicted after ICE released them was 2,560.

These 2,560 new crimes by aliens ICE released instead of deported in 2014 include: 298 dangerous drug offenses, 185 assaults, 40 weapons offenses, 28 sex offenses, 10 sex assaults, four kidnappings, two arsons, and one homicide. There were 1,044 traffic offenses included in the list.

Only 3 percent of the Criminal Aliens Released in 2014 Have Been Removed

As of July 25, 2015, only 974 (3 percent) of the 30,558 criminal aliens freed by ICE in 2014 have been removed. Presumably some of these aliens are again incarcerated or in ICE custody following conviction for the 2,560 new crimes after their release by ICE.

However, ICE reports that 28,017 still had a pending immigration case as of July 25, 2015, suggesting that many of these released criminal aliens will remain here for some time under Obama administration policies that allow them to elect for drawn-out immigration court proceedings rather than accelerated forms of due process and removal.

In addition, there were 1,567 of these released criminal aliens who have been allowed to stay in the United States.

ICE’s full response to the Judiciary Committee’s inquiries can be found here.

Improved Reporting on Immigration Status of Criminals Needed

The public should not have to rely on members of Congress to demand information from federal immigration agencies about criminal aliens. Immigration status should be reported on a routine basis by all law enforcement agencies, so that federal authorities can respond appropriately when an alien is arrested, and so that the public can determine the true public safety impact of immigration policy. Legislation has been introduced by Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) that would remedy this problem.

By Summer: The Final Benghazi Cmte Report Published

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Timing is everything and yet there are still a handful of additional investigations still to come.

A big question that remains unanswered is where on Ahmed Abu Khattallah, the only attacker that has been arrested.

According to a press release from the Justice Department:

PBS: “The superseding indictment describes Khatallah’s alleged role in the attacks at a U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi and a second U.S. facility there, known as the annex. According to the superseding indictment, Khatallah was a leader of an extremist militia group and he conspired with others to attack the facilities, kill U.S. citizens, destroy buildings and other property, and plunder materials, including documents, maps and computers containing sensitive information.

“The offenses that could carry death sentences include one count of murder of an internationally protected person; three counts of murder of an officer and employee of the United States; four counts of killing a person in the course of an attack on a federal facility involving the use of a firearm and a dangerous weapon; and two counts of maliciously damaging and destroying U.S. property by means of fire and an explosive causing death.”

In the indictment, the U.S. alleges that Khatallah undertook the attack because he had learned the United States had two intelligence facilities in Benghazi.

House Benghazi probe: Report by summer, factor for Clinton

WASHINGTON (AP) – Nearly two years after it was created, the House Benghazi Committee is plowing ahead, interviewing witnesses, reviewing documents and promising a final report “before summer” that is certain to have repercussions for Democrat Hillary Clinton’s bid for the presidency.

The panel’s Republican chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, said in an email to The Associated Press that the committee has made “considerable progress” investigating the deadly 2012 attacks that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens.

Gowdy declined to elaborate specifically on what progress has been made beyond listing new witnesses and documents.

The Benghazi inquiry has gone on longer than the 9/11 Commission took to investigate the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001, spending more than $6 million in the process, Democrats said. They say the only goal of the investigation is to undermine Clinton’s candidacy.

Gowdy declined to be interviewed, but said in a statement that the committee had advanced in its inquiry in recent weeks, after interviewing national security adviser Susan Rice; her deputy, Ben Rhodes, and other witnesses. Former CIA Director David Petraeus and former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta are among those who have testified before the panel in closed-door sessions at the Capitol.

Many of the witnesses, including Rice and Rhodes, had not been interviewed before by a congressional committee, Gowdy said. The panel has interviewed a total of 83 witnesses since its creation in May 2014, including 65 never before questioned by lawmakers, he said in an email to The Associated Press.

The committee also has gained access to documents from the State Department and CIA and to a cache of emails from Clinton and Stevens, who was killed on Sept. 11, 2012 in twin attacks on the diplomatic outpost and CIA annex in Benghazi.

“The American people and the families of the victims deserve the truth, and I’m confident the value and fairness of our investigation will be abundantly clear to everyone when they see the report for themselves,” Gowdy said in an email, promising the report “as soon as possible, before summer.”

Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time of the attacks, dismissed the panel’s work, noting at a recent Democratic debate that she testified before Gowdy and other lawmakers for nearly 11 hours last fall.

“Anybody who watched that and listened to it knows that I answered every question that I was asked, and when it was over the Republicans had to admit they didn’t learn anything,” Clinton said.

She was referring to Gowdy’s comments immediately after the Oct. 22 hearing in which he struggled to explain what the committee – and the American public – learned from the marathon session. “I don’t know that she testified that much differently than she has the previous times that she’s testified,” he said.

Democrats are skeptical about Gowdy and the GOP members finishing their report in a few months, noting that the committee has blown through other self-imposed deadlines.

“The only real deadline is the presidential election” in November, said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., a member of the Benghazi panel and a longtime Gowdy critic.

Schiff dismissed Gowdy’s claim that new witnesses and documents have led to progress in the investigation. “They have a number of new witnesses and a number of new documents, but no new facts,” he said.

“I don’t think there are new meaningful facts to uncover at this point,” after seven previous congressional investigations and an independent panel led by former U.N. Ambassador Thomas Pickering and retired Adm. Mike Mullen, a former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Schiff said.

Schiff serves on the House intelligence committee, which completed its investigation in 2014.

The Pickering-Mullen report said security at the Benghazi compound was “grossly inadequate” and that requests for security improvements were not acted upon in Washington. Subsequent congressional reports debunked various claims, including a “stand down” order to the military.

Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the Benghazi committee’s senior Democrat, said the 22-month-old panel is “nothing more than a taxpayer-funded effort to bring harm to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.”

Republicans say the committee has been hindered by stonewalling by the State Department and other executive branch agencies. And they say Schiff and other Democrats have done more carping about the committee than constructive work on its behalf.

Still, Republican insistence that the investigation is not politically motivated was undermined last year when House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., suggested that the Benghazi panel could take credit for Clinton’s slumping poll numbers.

Rep. Susan Brooks, R-Ind., a member of the Benghazi committee, said Clinton’s testimony was the most visible, but not necessarily the most important, aspect of the panel’s work.

“We want to know what went wrong between the secretary of state, Defense Department, White House and CIA,” Brooks said at a Rotary Club meeting last week in Anderson, Ind. The Herald Bulletin of Anderson reported on the event.

“We want to prevent this from happening again, which is what the families of the victims want,” Brooks said, according to the newspaper.

$500 Million State Dept Climate Change Collusion

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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

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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.