Posted on 02/06/2014 1:09:31 PM PST by Rusty0604
While Washington debates over what is the proper explanation of the CBO's report which explicitly states that millions of workers will drop out of the labor force over the next decade thanks to Obamacare, Obama himself may have finally thrown in the towel, realizing that the longer the full implementation of Obamacare is delayed, the longer the myth that it is a viable Ponzi scheme - as opposed to non-viable - can persist. Perhaps this explains why AP reports that the White House is now considering an extension of the president's decision to let people keep their individual insurance policies even if they are not compliant with the health care overhaul, according to two top industry officials.
From AP:
Avalere Health CEO Dan Mendelson said Thursday that the administration may let policyholders keep that coverage for an additional three years, stressing that no decision has been made. Policymakers are waiting to see what rate hikes health insurers plan for the insurance exchanges that are key to the overhaul's coverage expansions.
"The administration is entertaining a range of options to ensure that this individual market has stability to it and that would be one thing that they could do," he said.
Avalere Health is a market analysis firm, but Mendelson said his company was not advising the administration on exchange policy. He said he has had informal discussions with administration officials about the extension, but he didn't identify them.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, Joanne Peters, said "We are continuing to examine all sorts of ways to provide consumers with more choices and to smooth the transition as we implement the law."
Earlier, Mark Bertolini, Chairman and CEO of Aetna and the nation's third largest insurer, told analysts during his earnings call that he had heard the plans may be extended. Perhaps a more important thing Bertolini said is that his company may pull out of markets if the Medicare cuts are too high, adding that 2015 may be challenging due to medicare cuts. This may have been the final straw that pushed the administration into action.
However, even a longer extension than was rumored previously will hardly help reinstate the policies of all those millions who lost coverage in the lead up to the Obamacare enactment as insurance companies know that terms will once again change eventually, so why go through the headache of temporary reinstatement just to cut all those "non-compliant" individuals once again?
Individual policyholders were hit with a wave of cancellation notices last year because their coverage was less robust than what is required under the law, and many states allowed insurance companies to simply cancel them.
The wave of cancellation notices — at least 4.7 million of them — hit just when the new HealthCare.gov website was experiencing some of its worst technical problems, and it undercut the president's well-publicized promise that if you liked your plan you could keep it.
You couldn't.
At first the White House went into damage-control mode, arguing that many of the cancelled plans were "junk" insurance and consumers would be better off with the broader coverage available through the health care law's new insurance markets.
But soon Obama was forced to reverse course, urging insurers and state regulators to allow policyholders to keep their existing plans for an additional year. Most states complied with the request.
Now the administration is considering adding more years to this extension to avoid another wave of problems if rates on the exchange climb too high and people are left without an affordable coverage option. Health insurers are supposed to submit by May the rates they want to charge on the exchanges next year.
Actually, the only reason why Obama is suddenly willing to compromise over every aspect of his "crowning achievement" is that finally its tactical, and strategic failure has become clear for all to see. So it would be best to enact it piecemeal, and claim success for whatever legacy aspects of the system are working, while blasting everything that his unprecedentedly complicated, centrally-planned contraption has unleashed.
Finally, why three years? Because by then Obama will be gone (absent some very radical changes to presidential term rules), and Obamacare will be someone else's problem.
Obozo the Clown president is proposing chaos. He in his idiocy may feel perfectly fine making up law to suit his whim but insurance co’s CANNOT nor can the American people.
What? Are you some right wing nut? Of course it’s just a coincidence. Just a mere coincidence. Obama would never do anything political. After all he’s fighting hard against the corrupt Washington system. Er... wait.
And they mocked Cruz for suggesting the delay.
I happened to (unintentionally) see a short interview with Povich on a local news broadcast hyping some show he’s doing.
Dude is 75 with an 18 yr old kid...
The Marxists are trying to preserve the 2014 and 2016 elections. That’s all.
If he ever leaves office he will disappear into history. Nobody will want to be near him. If Hillary gets in she’ll go away with obamacare and his name won’t be mentioned. Like I said, IF he ever leaves office.
If he delays it three more years, does he expect a Republican in office to take the blame for his namesake law?
Yes, can’t the house petition the supreme court to block his lawless actions, later it will be a dem majority. He is acting, is all we have is impeachment...drag his butt to jail..subpoena him for obstructing justice..he is not obeying the law.
You could be exactly right, for Harry Reid said ‘the Affordable Care Act was the first step to the Single Payer System’....so if it fails, do they care? No. And they may have this in mind for 2016. Do you think it was intended to fail? I am beginning to think it was.
Therefore, doing ANYTHING short of repealing Obamacare is reckless and keeping this country and individual Americans needlessly on a path of known destruction. There is therefore no excuse not to admit failure and save America from this unnecessary plague.
He has no such authority.
Of course Congress will do nothing.
“We’re ready to be led” - John Boehner
I could be wrong, but isn’t the child from another marriage? IIRC, he is married to Connie Chung and I seem to recall that she couldn’t naturally have a child or something like that.
Could be, he’s a creepy lookin old dude to my eye.
I’m sure he and Connie are hard at work raising future Democrat one percenters.
His main purpose in life now is to 1) make money, and 2) to provide a DNA testing service for lowlifes.
So all policies go broke except obammascare, no matter what, so if I owneda company and saw Iit going broke, I would close Iig. So if all the insurance companies closed, and reopened not as insurance but a collective help program, could that bypass the law no longer described as insurance.
Wiki says he makes $7m per year for that travesty.
I was shocked he makes almost 2x Jerry Springer.
There’s some justice though..Judge Judy is making $31m.
I cannot even imagine the monumental IT costs to insurers of all of this churn. But it’s ok, they’ll pass it on to consumers through higher premiums, deductibles, co-pays, and get a bailout, also from consumers (or should I say producers?).
They put things off as they gain more power and control. Once they’ve acquired full control, it doesn’t matter anymore.
So this IS NOT a joke? Obama is singlehandedly destroying the finely tuned instrument that WAS the insurance industry. His la-di-da policy changes are pulling the piano wiring all out and dumping the mess on the floor, unattended.
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