Posted on 02/11/2014 7:23:09 AM PST by upchuck
It's getting difficult and slinking toward impossible to defend the Affordable Care Act. The latest blow to Democratic candidates, liberal activists, and naïve columnists like me came Monday from the White House, which announced yet another delay in the Obamacare implementation.
For the second time in a year, certain businesses were given more time before being forced to offer health insurance to most of their full-time workers. Employers with 50 to 99 workers were given until 2016 to comply, two years longer than required by law. During a yearlong grace period, larger companies will be required to insure fewer employees than spelled out in the law.
Not coincidentally, the delays punt implementation beyond congressional elections in November, which raises the first problem with defending Obamacare: The White House has politicized its signature policy.
The win-at-all-cost mentality helped create a culture in which a partisan-line vote was deemed sufficient for passing transcendent legislation. It spurred advisers to develop a dishonest talking point—"If you like your health plan, you'll be able to keep your health plan." And political expediency led Obama to repeat the line, over and over and over again, when he knew, or should have known, it was false.
Defending the ACA became painfully harder when online insurance markets were launched from a multibillion-dollar website that didn't work, when autopsies on the administration's actions revealed an epidemic of incompetence that began in the Oval Office and ended with no accountability.
Then officials started fudging numbers and massaging facts to promote implementation, nothing illegal or even extraordinary for this era of spin. But they did more damage to the credibility of ACA advocates.
Finally, there are the ACA rule changes—27 major adjustments, according to Fox News, without congressional approval. J. Mark Iwry, deputy assistant Treasury secretary for health policy, said the administration has broad "authority to grant transition relief" under a section of the Internal Revenue Code that directs the Treasury secretary to "prescribe all needful rules and regulations for the enforcement" of tax obligations, according to The New York Times.
Yes, Obamacare is a tax.
Advocates for a strong executive branch, including me, have given the White House a pass on its rule-making authority, because implementing such a complicated law requires flexibility. But the law may be getting stretched to the point of breaking. Think of the ACA as a game of Jenga: Adjust one piece and the rest are affected; adjust too many and it falls.
If not illegal, the changes are fueling suspicion among Obama-loathing conservatives, and confusion among the rest of us. Even the law's most fervent supporters are frustrated.
Ron Pollack, executive director of the consumer lobby Families USA and an ally of the White House, told The Washington Post he was "very surprised" by the latest delays. For workers at large companies that don't provide coverage, he said, "It's very unfortunate … that they don't have a guarantee it will be extended to them for quite some time."
Put me in the frustrated category. I want the ACA to work because I want health insurance provided to the millions without it, for both the moral and economic benefits. I want the ACA to work because, as Charles Lane wrote for The Washington Post, the link between work and insurance needs to be broken. I want the ACA to work because the GOP has not offered a serious alternative that can pass Congress.
Unfortunately, the president and his team are making their good intentions almost indefensible.
I’d rather have the employer pay me the money as salary and I find and buy my own insurance than have the mployer ‘meddle in my life’ finding my the company they think I should buy from.
IRS code (the government) currently gives the write-off to the company .
It could just as easily give it to the individual employee.
If individuals purchased health insurance directly, the U.S. would move closer to a market-based healthcare economy, which could start containing healthcare costs.
Until the CONSUMER of health care is the person bearing the responsibility for costs of both insurance and health care, we will have a system that is unsustainable.
IRS code ( “the government”) currently gives the write-off to the company .
It ( “the government”) could just as easily give it to the individual employee. Which one is the smaller government solution?
Would this increase choice or limit it? Would it increase individual freedom or limit it?
Are individuals too stupid to choose from 20 self-purchased plans as opposed to the 3 offered at work?
How about no deductions at all for individuals or companies ? That would be truly free market . (and keep the government out of healthcare)
So you’re an employer who likes subsidies.
I get it now.
Your post made me go look. Wow! They’re on his a$$ like white on rice.
Some people just don’t understand what is really going on. I have often told people that I cannot understand why they keep on looking to the government to solve a problem the government created in the first place. It is like expecting the guy who just pulled a gun on you and took all your money to offer to take you to dinner.
I think a lot of people need to be taught the actual meaning of insurance, it seems obvious that many do not understand what it is all about. They seem to think there is something magical about it but at the very best all insurance can do is allow people to agree to pool their risks, they agree to pay out a certain amount every month even when they are NOT suffering any losses so that when they do have a loss A MAJORITY PORTION of that loss will be paid on their behalf by the pool. This necessitates that the insurance company MUST take in more money than they pay out and no amount of government finagling can change that, if the government takes over the function of the insurance company they will simply operate far less efficiently than the private insurance company does simply because government does not have to show a profit to survive. I know I am stating the obvious but I have come to realize that a lot of people apparently are not able to comprehend the obvious. People who understand these things which should be so obvious do NOT vote for government schemes and they do NOT vote for politicians of any party who PROMOTE government schemes.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.