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.
Ponzi schemes are non-viable by definition. That sure is a highly-deluded myth to maintain.
um, how is it Obama has the power to change this law all the time for political advantage? I guess cankles Clinton knows that Odumbo care is going to hurt her.
Basically, zero is just hanging on by a thread, and will do anything not to see his Obama Care baby not go plop and be repealed! I guess zero thinks Hillary will rescue it down the road if she is elected in 2016, let’s hope not.
How can the President decree that people can keep their individual plans, when so many of those plans are already lost—GONE—no longer in the insurance companies’ data bases?
This is being done purely to create chaos.
A three year delay?
Three years. Something ELSE is going to happen in three years...
Wait! I’ve got it. I just remembered... Obama will be leaving office in three years.
...
...
Oh well, it’s probably just a coincidence...
What about all the people that have employer sponsored plans that may or may not meet the Obamacare requirements? Will they be extended also to avoid a really massive revolt? Doesn’t this leave the insurance companies with just the people who had pre-existing conditions and couldn’t get insurance?
This should strengthen the arguments for repeal, but reduce the complaints prior to the election.
Unless a national crisis arises that requires presidential elections to be suspended, until such a time as the crisis has abated.
Hoping he can cram that genie back into the bottle. That damage is done and more damage is coming.
It’s all positioning trying to make the insurers the bad guys in all of this....”I told them they could keep your policy, but, they won’t do it because they’re greedy blah, blah, blah...”
By then people’s insurance premiums will be so high because of the demographics of those that did enroll in the new policies that Hillery can sweep in and save the day with single payer.
He can extend all he wants but come January 2017 it disappears!!! Unless the democrats throw his sorry ass under the bus to save their own sorry asses!!!
Obama Considering Thiry-Three Year Extension To His Presidency- He`ll ignore the Constitution again.
Watch for it!
Insurance companies can cancel those policies the same as others. Probably won’t have too when the rates skyrocket next year.
I think he’s hoping he can kick the can down the road and make it someone else’s problem.
“Unless a national crisis arises that requires presidential elections to be suspended, until such a time as the crisis has abated. “
well, i think they would need confiscate 200 million guns first.
That is a definite possibility.
This may be just another small play in their long game.
Ever watch Maury Povitch? Occasionally, he has show with “out-of-control” teenage girls.
After the opening spot with the crying, sobbing mother recounting all the crap she has to put up with, the little hoor comes out on stage, “You don’t know me (flashing the bird) - I DO WHAT I WANT!”
THAT is Obama.
Hillary wanted to foist single payer on us in 93.
That will be her fix.
Actually, 0bama will be leaving office in 35 and half months. I am counting every one of them. Woo hoo! Less than three more years of 0bama.
It sounds more like a postponement than an extension.
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