Obamacare opponents have a problem these days: to wit, the Obama administration keeps making it harder and harder to successfully describe what Obamacare currently is. Case in point: one of the more hated (I’d say most hated, but there are too many lumps of failure mixed into this walking disaster of a healthcare law to crown any particular one as worst) parts of the Affordable Care Act* is the individual mandate. Well, guess what? The administration just more or less delayed it!

Let me summarize that WaPo link: ‘honor system.’ That’s right, the administration is going to take Americans’ words for it that they tried to sign up, but couldn’t. Mind you, after mid-April (the ostensible new deadline) people will no longer be able to get an extension online. Instead, they’ll have to call up, and then use one of a number of handy excuses:

At that point, the grounds for an extension will become narrower, matching rules for special enrollment periods that have existed for the past few months. Those include people who have a new baby, are getting a divorce, lose a job with health insurance or had a technical problem signing up for coverage through HealthCare.gov.

…and they’re not going to check that, either! Honor system. Don’t tell them the real reason why you don’t want to sign up (“because I don’t wanna”), and they won’t ask you for the real reason. So, hey, problem solved! – Except for the suckers who actually signed up already for bad insurance policies, and the self-employed who have to estimate their future 2014 tax right now, and anybody who trusted this administration in the first place, and of course the insurance companies (I will understand if your sympathy for that last group is muted) who will really take this ruling in the neck.

Then again, it’s not like Barack Obama ever has to run for anything, ever again: and thanks largely to Joe Biden he’s impeachment-proof. All Barry has to do is get through the next three years with as few people as possible screaming at him, and that’s only because the screaming might distract him from his golf game.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: It would appear, by the way, that Lefty groups who thought that the mandate wasn’t being brought up because signups were just jim-dandy (thus not requiring an extension of the signup period) were, ah, incorrect. This should surprise nobody paying attention.

*I only used that term because I wanted to do some SEO. The Affordable Care Act neither provides care, nor is particularly affordable. For that matter, it’s barely an Act.