Health insurance companies lost money selling policies in theindividual market again last year, as premiums from healthy peopleweren’t enough to cover the costs of the sick. The red ink is a bigreason why companies such as Aetna Inc. and UnitedHealth GroupInc. left the Affordable Care Act marketplaces inseveral states this year.

Now, the bill that Senate Republicans hope will repeal Obamacare includes a pile of money tohelp struggling insurers in those marketplaces, where about12.2 million Americans got coverage this year. Specifically, itincludes $50 billion over the next four years “to fund arrangementswith health insurance issuers to address coverage and accessdisruption and respond to urgent health care needs,” according tothe bill text.

That’s more than enough to cover the industry’s Obamacarelosses, new data released Friday by consulting firmMcKinsey & Co. indicates. Health plans lost between$5.5 billion and $7.5 billion on the individual market in 2016,according to McKinsey’s analysis of regulatory filings.

The Senate bill would allocate more than twice that figure — $15billion each year in 2018 and 2019 — to stem insurers’ losses andpotentially moderate future rate hikes. Premiums increased morethan 20 percent for 2017, suggesting that insurers’ results shouldimprove further this year, said Jim Oatman, who co-authored theMcKinsey report.

“A direct positive for the health insurance stocks”

The irony of this big payday is that Republicans foughtprovisions in the original Obamacare law intended to stabilize theindividual insurance market. Back in 2013, Florida Senator MarcoRubio warned that the law would “bail out insurance companies atthe expense of taxpayers.” Rubio later bragged that “we led theeffort and wiped out the bailout fund.”

Related: Health care investors are in denial about theirrisks

As a result, insurers didn’t get some of the money they werecounting on. Several of them sued the federal government,claiming they weren’t paid the stabilization money as required bylaw. For example, insurer Molina Healthcare Inc. is seeking$52 million in stabilization payments it says the government owesfor 2015 losses, the company said in its most recent quarterlyfiling. Across the industry, the total sum exceeds $8 billion, aModern Healthcare analysis found in December.

Health insurers live and die by political whim as well asmarket forces. Republicans, having stymied the law’s originalpolicy meant to cushion health plan losses, are now ready tocome through with billions of dollars to put them on a solidfooting.

But the bill would also present big challenges for insurers. Itdoes away with Obamacare’s requirement — known as the individualmandate — that all people buy coverage or pay a penalty. That couldend up harming insurers’ profits if only sick people buycoverage, though Republicans say they're working to come up with areplacement. And proposed law reduces subsidies that help peopleafford coverage, raising the risk that more people may opt to gouninsured.

Still, health care stocks jumped as the Senate bill wasrevealed, with the Standard & Poor's 500 Health Care Indexhitting a record. The $50 billion to steady the marketplace “is adirect positive for the health insurance stocks,” Ana Gupte, ananalyst at Leerink Partners, wrote in a note to investors. Theconsequences for patients likely won’t be as bright.

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