When congressional Democrats wrote the Affordable Care Act, we included the exact same mechanism, except we made the risk corridors a temporary three-year program to create stability during the startup period. We also made the program less generous, with higher thresholds for risk-sharing than the Republicans included in Part D.

Given this history, and the fact that our risk corridor program is more conservative than the Part D version in both eligibility and duration, the new GOP attacks on the Affordable Care Act ring hollow. Some are blatantly dishonest, while others are completely false. Rubio has warned that we are getting “closer to the reality that billions of dollars in taxpayer money is going to be used to bail out these exchanges.” In fact, this week, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says the program will actually save the federal government $8 billion because collections from insurers will significantly exceed payments. And unlike Medicare Part D, which was not paid for, the Affordable Care Act reduces the deficit by more than $1.5 trillion.

Of course, attacks on the Affordable Care Act with no basis in fact are nothing new. From claiming that the law created “death panels” to insisting that the law is a government takeover of health care to arguing that the law would result in people being jailed for failing to purchase insurance, Republicans have continuously attacked the bill by spreading outright falsehoods.