White House: Health care penalty deadline to be delayed by up to six weeks

Amid mounting criticism, the White House said Wednesday that it plans to soften the deadline for when Americans are required to purchase health insurance. The date by when Americans would be penalized for not having signed up for health insurance could be “slid” back by as much as six weeks, administration officials told NBC News.

But it was not immediately clear Wednesday whether the adjustment to a cornerstone of the Affordable Care Act would need to be approved by Congress or could be done by the Department of Health and Human Services administratively.

As the law stands now, individuals are expected to begin the application process via HealthCare.gov by Feb. 15 to avoid a financial penalty when the deadline hits on March 31, since it generally takes about six weeks for the insurance to kick in.

But under the prospective change, individuals will only be expected to have started enrollment by March 31 to avoid incurring a penalty.

Most of the insurance company “making up” is being done through policy redesign. Buyers of the exchange policies will discover one or more of the following “feature modifications”:

1. The doctors and hospitals available for exchange policy holders will be a sub-set of those available on the same coverage purchased through an employer.

2. The deductable will be increased by as much as four times.

3. Copays will be increased.

4. Coverage for services provided by doctors outside the group will be eliminated.

5. The reimbursement rate will be reduced from a typical 80 % to 60 or 70%, with 80% coverage limited to the “premium” policies.

6. Guidelines for permitted care will be tightened.

7. And, of course, premiums will be increased.

So they are planning to punish the people who are too poor to sign up?

My cousin says it will cost him 1800 a month for his family of 4...he was paying 400 a month....he makes about 2000 a month....What about food?

If his wife goes to work....the added daycare will be at least 400...a month...if she can find a job.

I know of 24 families in some appts here who are all on welfare of some sort...do they have to pay?

So if some people dont have money to pay but their insurance has been canceled like my cousins...what good will a fine do?..the reason he will be in violation is BECAUSE he doesnt have the money to pay for insurance after this new law caused his co. to CANCEL insurance!

Are they going to arrest DRS. who try treating people at outside of this system? because thats what will be happening. Some of the country Drs. dont care much about money....they will revert to trade or straight cash.

Doesnt look like progress to me.

Obamacare is an example of why there is no right way to do the wrong thing. Socialism and Obamacare are wrong because it is government applying coercive force into areas they don't belong, morally or constitutionally.

As your case study shows, a program or a society that puts equality first (Obamacare's biggest excuse for existence) will end up with neither equality or freedom. As the first century and an half of America shows, a society that puts freedom first will have a great deal of both freedom and equality.

A more detailed analysis follows if interested:

The 2013 budget of the Department of Health and Human Services is almost ONE TRILLION DOLLARS. The monstrous government middleman is the reason health care costs have gone up in the last few decades and wait until Obamacare kicks in. The naïvety is in thinking government is the solution when in fact government is the problem. Government has wasted TRILLIONS of dollars over the last decade driving up health care costs. But government will NEVER admit it screwed up or that it is the problem. The government's answer is always for more money and bigger programs like Obamacare. The government doesn't account for those trillions of dollars. Government will never account for its spending and will take as much of your money as it can get away with. Only the vote of the American people can stop the insanity.

Before the 1920’s, the federal government of the United States spent a small one-digit fraction of the GDP. Government was small and, therefore, Americans were free. The free market thrived such that the average American prospered more than the average citizen anywhere else on earth. People from all over the world literally died to get here – not because they wanted government handouts or to be taken care of by government, but to be free of government. Historical fact as well as theory is on the side of the free market every time, with America in the 1800’s until the 1920’s as a prime example. Historical fact puts socialism and its Obamcare-like programs on the ash heap of history.

Until government got involved in health care in the 60'a and 70's, our health care worked just fine. The free market worked then and works now. Competition for health care guaranteed and continues to guarantee the best care at the lowest cost and no bureaucratic middleman needing to be paid and driving up costs for doing nothing except creating tons of red tape. The free-market economy driving health care was & is robust and accommodated the small % of those unable to afford the costs. That % of unaffordability has grown dramatically since government got involved.

Growth in government creates more poverty - it's true as historical fact and also in theory: the patient paying the doctor directly is less expensive than the patient paying a monstrous, distant bureaucracy who in turn pays the doctor AFTER he's taken his cut off the top. And the patient will always be more careful with his own money than the bureaucracy's use of the patient's money for which the bureaucracy has essentially no accountability. And the bureaucracy is only people - people like you and me - people with their own interests and ambitions. The main goal of ANY bureaucracy is its own perpetuation and growth, even long after the supposed reason for its existence is gone. That's why Reagan said the closest thing to eternal life this side of heaven is a government bureaucracy. Big government bureaucracy robs people of their earnings, incentive, and God-given liberty, and sucks the very life out of the economy.

Why do people keep falling for bankrupt socialism? There are many reasons but a couple are 1) government has a megaphone, press releases, policy statements whereas the free market has none of those things, 2) when there’s a problem, it is much easier (& naïve) to say “Pass a law”, “Let government fix it”, than to wait for the free market to respond. The free market is invisible, you can’t say, “There’s the free market over there” like you can with government and laws. Yet, as Adam Smith pointed out in his landmark work “The Wealth of Nations”, it is precisely the “invisible hand” of the free market that benefits not only those involved in the transaction, but society as a whole. And that is the story of how America became the most prosperous and envied nation on earth. The road of Obama, Obamcare, and the Socialists is, as Hayek said, “the road to serfdom.”

This is a fight for freedom. The fight for freedom is specifically a fight against socialism and big government. It is an age-old fight. A free society is a happy society and the free market brings prosperity to many and opportunity to all. The free market is the best anti-poverty program known to man. A socialist society is a slave society bringing human misery and poverty to most everyone except the politburo and ruling elite.

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