…in order to help(?) Democrats.
The Obama administration is set to announce another major delay in implementing the Affordable Care Act, easing election pressure on Democrats.
As early as this week, according to two sources, the White House will announce a new directive allowing insurers to continue offering health plans that do not meet ObamaCare’s minimum coverage requirements.
Prolonging the “keep your plan” fix will avoid another wave of health policy cancellations otherwise expected this fall.
Couple of things about this. Note that all of this assumes that the administration can get away with unilaterally and retroactively changing the health care law again: Barack Obama is riding the GOP’s quite understandable reluctance to impeach him right into the ground*.
- First off: hey, remember when the Democrats were all absolutely certain that Obamacare was going to lock in the American voting public for a generation**?
- Second: will something like this even work as a blatant political ploy when everybody reports it as being a blatant political ploy? Don’t be so quick to say ‘yes:’ this administration isn’t actually very good at this.
- Third: let us assume, for the moment, that insurers can go along with this scheme (and that it will actually happen). The basic result? …Increased uncertainty. The brutal truth of the matter is that some very unpleasant things are going to happen to people’s healthcare, and that these unpleasant things have been mandated by law. The Democrats would not expect organizations engaged in any other activities to properly function under a regime where they knew that they would be hammered, just not when: why do they expect businesses to operate differently?
- Fourth: this is a fun one, for given (and actually scary) values of ‘fun.’ Is the administration planning to allow healthcare companies to offer those used-to-be-horrid-according-to-Democratic-agitprop healthcare plans to the uninsured, too? – Because if they don’t, congratulations: the Democratic party has just implemented a caste system in American healthcare. Don’t quit your current job, because if you do you lose your current kind of decent healthcare and have to take one of those Obamacare plans that those people are stuck with.
And, lastly (and from the above link): “Several sources said they had heard chatter about an extension but that the administration had not made efforts to discuss the possibility with industry officials.”
…of course they didn’t. Didn’t you hear? The Obama administration sees all, knows all. Just ask ’em: they’ll tell you. Or at least they’ll tell somebody who kind of looks like you and maybe lives at that place that you used to live at, but ‘close’ counts, right?
(H/T: AoSHQ)
Moe Lane (crosspost)
*In hindsight, it may not have been the most intelligent thing in the universe to impeach Bill Clinton. Full disclosure: I said that when I was a Democrat, too, if not for the same reasons.
**Admittedly, it still might end up doing that. Just… not in the way that the Democratic party intended.