Apart from the fact that the IT back end for Obamacare is FUBAR - the article claims that instead of actually paying the insurance companies what they are owed, there is this:
The administration is planning a “workaround” for payments, said Daniel Durham, vice president for policy and regulatory affairs at America’s Health Insurance Plans.
Health plans will estimate how much they are owed, and submit that estimate to the government. Once the system is built, the government and insurers can reconcile the payments made with the plan data to “true up” payments, he said.
My question - I thought the mechanism of how insurance companies are paid is set in law. The information above seems to imply that the administration can ignore the law and pay arbitrary amounts to insurers (and supposedly reconcile it later). How is that possible within legal framework?