Affordable Care Act - 3-31-2014

The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy!

H. L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy, 1926

The Obama administration this week announced that some 6 million people had successfully signed up for healthcare insurance under the Affordable Care Act, via the governmental healthcare website. They touted the fact that the law was gaining more and more enrollees as the Monday, March 31 deadline approached.

The White House opted to ignore discussing the reality that given the fact that acquiring health insurance was the law and as such people HAD to have such health protection, of course the numbers would have to go up.

The White House also omitted having the conversation on the fact that the 6 million number only includes those who have signed up, as in put items into their website shopping cart.  It does not count the number of people who have actually purchased and paid for their insurance; that number also does not delineate how many of those people already had insurance, how many qualified for subsidies, and how many opted for Medicaid.

The subsidies and Medicaid are after all not gifts from the government, but reassigned wealth from those working to support the government’s largesse.

Those aforementioned specific numbers within the heralded six million seem to be somehow unavailable, as the administration euphemistically says about information they do not wish to divulge.

In addition to all that, this week the administration unilaterally and illegally again extended the date for purchasing the mandated health insurance to those who, on the honor system, have claimed they had trouble with the website.

The outright absurdity of this entire ill conceived ‘Ponzi scheme’ legislation would indeed be comical if it were not so deleterious to the financial health of the nation.

Politico.com did the nation an invaluable service this week by highlighting the number and specificity of many of the unilateral delays to the Affordable Care Act. The American electorate should be appalled and worried about an executive overreach of power as described by the facts of the piece.

It is reprinted here in its entirety, with thanks to Politico.com.

To wit:

Working backwards, here’s a brief history of some of the most prominent Obamacare delays:

March 25: Final enrollment deadline extended. The March 31 deadline — the end of enrollment for 2014 — will be loosened for people with special sign-up circumstances.

March 14: High risk pools extended. The special, temporary coverage for people with serious pre-existing conditions — which was only supposed to last until the health insurance exchanges were in place — was extended a third time for another month.

Feb. 10: Employer mandate delayed. This time, businesses with between 50 and 100 workers were given until 2016 to offer coverage, and the mandate will be phased in for employers with more than 100 workers.

Jan. 14: High risk pools extended. The high-risk insurance pools, which originally had been slated to close Jan. 1, had already been extended once.

Dec. 24: Enrollment deadline extended. In a message on HealthCare.gov, customers were told they could get help finishing their Jan. 1 applications if they were already in line on Dec. 24.

Dec 12: Enrollment deadline extended. Customers on the federal enrollment website were given nearly two more weeks to sign up for coverage effective Jan. 1.

Nov. 27: SHOP delayed. Online enrollment for the federal health insurance exchanges for small businesses was delayed.

Nov. 21: Open enrollment delayed for 2015. The administration pushed back next year’s enrollment season by a month.

July 2: Employer mandate delayed. The administration declared that it wouldn’t enforce the fines in 2014 for businesses with more than 50 full-time workers who don’t offer health coverage. The fines were pushed back to 2015.

Nov. 15, 2012: Exchange deadline delayed. The Department of Health and Human Services gave states an extra month to decide whether they would set up their own health insurance exchanges — a decision they announced just one day before the original deadline.