Posted on 07/09/2013 7:53:16 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Surprised by the recent waivers from the Obama administration on the Affordable Care Act? Get ready for more, writes Margot Sanger-Katz at National Journal, because the employer mandate is far from the only piece of ObamaCare that’s not ready for prime time. In fact, it might be easier to select the few components that might be ready for the implementation target date than to number those that won’t:
If you’ve been reading all the Obamacare stories lately, you might get the impression that the administration has just realized it will not be able to implement the massive health reform as designed.
It has known for months.
As far back as March, a top IT official at the Department of Health and Human Services said the department’s current ambition for the law’s new online insurance marketplaces was that they not be “a Third-World experience.” Several provisions had already been abandoned in an effort to simplify the administration’s task and maximize the chances that the new systems would be ready to go live in October, when customers are supposed to start signing up for insurance.
In April, several consultants focusing on the new online marketplaces, known as exchanges, told National Journal that the idealized, seamless user experience initially envisioned under the Affordable Care Act was no longer possible, as the administration axed non-essential provisions that were too complex to implement in time. (Read the story for some examples and commentary.) That focus has intensified lately, as officials announced that they would not be requiring employers to cover their workers next year or states to verify residents’ incomes before signing them up for insurance.
“There’s been a focusing in not on: ‘What is the full ACA vision?’ but: ‘What are the pieces we have to get running by October 1?” said Cindy Gillespie, senior managing director at McKenna Long and Aldridge, who is working with states and health plans.
Remember the impossibly-complicated flow charts produced by ObamaCare opponents to demonstrate the folly of the ACA? At the time, proponents of the bill insisted that those were just scare tactics designed to irrationally frighten voters from the benefits of change. Now, though, it’s the ACA’s supporters producing similar flow charts to demonstrate why they can’t meet their deadline:
“Bear in mind,” Sanger-Katz notes, “this chart is supposed to simplify and explain.” It comes from a consultant group assisting in the process of getting states to create the exchanges that will interface with the IRS, HHS, and other federal agencies. What it does explain is the mess that the ACA created, and how the administration cannot make it work more than three years after its passage.
Another point to bear in mind: this is the Obama administration’s signature accomplishment. For the past five years, they have had no higher priority than to make this work, which at the time of passage they claimed would be nowhere near as complicated as their critics claimed. Now they can’t even make the key employer mandate work after three years — three years in which employers and their employees have been forced to adjust to it by taking on more expensive insurance or cutting hours to their staffs.
Today, another waiver has just been announced:
Some smokers trying to get coverage next year under President Obama’s health care law may get a break from tobacco-use penalties that could have made their premiums unaffordable.
The Obama administration — in yet another health care overhaul delay — has quietly notified insurers that a computer system glitch will limit penalties that the law says the companies may charge smokers. A fix will take at least a year to put in place.
Older smokers are more likely to benefit from the glitch, experts say. But depending on how insurers respond to it, it’s also possible that younger smokers could wind up facing higher penalties than they otherwise would have.
Again, the administration has had three years to figure out how to charge smokers a higher rate. Insurance companies have done this for much longer than that; how difficult could it be?
If the Obama administration is this incompetent at running its highest priority, just how badly are they bungling everything else?
It's only purpose is to contribute to overwhelming the system.
... collapse the system and replace it with single payer.
Just watch. Next to be delayed will be the “Penalty Phase” for people who don’t buy insurance. The IRS is nowhere near ready to implement that.
Its other purpose is to further the notion of legislating from the 4th branch - the bureaucracy. 3000 pages of law that we’re now hearing various aspects are unworkable, so the bureaucrats apply non-legislated band-aids.
John Roberts is a sick puppy. He knew this too. He just wanted to enjoy watching it.
You Know The Drill
Click the Pic
Hey! FReepers!
Help Fill The Tank!
How About It? Huh?
It Ain't Askin' Too Much
Ya Know....
Check out the Homeland Security bubble and the Soc Security bubble performing somewhat similar tasks. Can’t the IRS do the same thing while they are screwing us in all other areas?
Most of us here on this website knew this.
The whole idea was to further weaken America’s economy and destroy the lives of more and more Americans. Unfortunately there is a large segment who just lay back in their Barcoloungers, fill up their navels with chip dip and snack their lives away.
This is not a chart of Obamacare. It is a chart showing how Hillarycare would have worked...or not.
Any resemblence is purely coincidental, no doubt...
Indeed only the names have been changed.
First, break the commercial insurance plans by placing such high demands on their services (through mandates for “specified services” and coverage of pre-existing conditions), they cannot operate on a fiscally sound basis, without going to very high premiums. Next, set up a version of a “clearinghouse” for reinsurance pools in each state, to be funded by a mandate placed upon the state, essentially extending Medicaid to those classes not now covered. Thirdly, make the penalties for not participating in an insurance plan quite low at first, then mandating higher and higher fines each year for continued failure to enroll in some plan, and offer the employer the right to opt out of providing coverage, paying a fine in lieu of the cost of coverage. Then, approaching the concept of “single-payer” coverage, after all the other plans have been priced out of the market, only one solution remains, heavily subsidized at first, of course.
Of course, at this point economics rears its head. As the realities set in, the medical services will be rationed, at times in a very severe manner, like a “death panel”, or by making the appointment for actual consultation or treatment on a “first-come, first-served” basis, regardless of severity of the symptoms.
Unless, or course, you are “politically connected”. If it is the approved and correct connection, you go to the head of the line.
Also, those with “reactionary” opinions somehow get shifted ever backward on the priorities.
But that is “socially justified” and “fair”.
Ya think 300 million applications will slow them down?
6 Minutes - Jonah Goldberg on Fox News
At 2:46 – there is no Obamacare – outsource decisions, regardless of Congressional Law, they will impose whatever they want – arbitrary system, they get to decide which laws are enforced.
These acts may doom immigration reform because of the erosion of trust in government.
Panel Lashes Out At Pres Obama’s Health Care Law - “Obamacare”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0D6-EqX9cU
Bump
Every piece of this national abortion the thugs decide not to implement just gets them closer to their real goal: a single payer system.
“Let’s take the existing healthcare system and screw it up so bad that the masses will be thrilled when we introduce the “new,” simple single payer system.
That’s the blue print. To bad they have to waste billions of taxpayer dollars to get there.
My hope is that, after nobamacare crashes, there will be a national revolt over any other “replacement” healthcare system proposed, including single payer.
Here is the result of "tobacco-use penalties" as applied in the UK version of Obamacare....
Mr Eeles claims his first two operations at the Queen Elizabeth II hospital in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, were cancelled due to a lack of beds and operating time respectively.
His third operation in February was postponed after he was found to have high blood pressure, while the fourth, scheduled for May, was abandoned because of concerns about his smoking
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1218927/Plumber-shattered-arm-left-horrifically-bent-shape-operation-cancelled-times.html#ixzz2YaHomdbJ
Mr Eeles, from Welham Green, Hertfordshire, applied for employment and support allowance but a doctor ruled he is ineligible for both because he can turn on a tap.
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