Richard Pollock analyzes the latest news about Affordable Care Act co-operatives for Daily Caller readers.

Obamacare health insurance co-ops surged past the $1 billion mark in losses this week, making history of sorts.

The insolvencies, totaling $1.36 billion, mean that the co-ops have burned through more than half of the original $2 billion appropriated in 2010 for the program under the Affordable Care Act. The funds were loaned to the start-up co-ops in 2012 and were to be repaid in 15 years, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which manages Obamacare.

Instead, 13 of the 23 federally-financed Obamacare co-ops have officially failed in only two years. Most are in the process of default as insurance regulators attempt to pay customer’s medical bills, cover medical providers and pay other creditors.

Thomas Miller, resident scholar in health care at the American Enterprise Institute, has calculated that the co-op failures will be a “total loss” for taxpayers.

“The way I’m reading the priority rules for who is paid in the event of these insolvencies and the way the co-op agreements were laid out, it looks like a total loss for the loans,” he told The Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview. “The taxpayers lose all the money.”