If Obamacare is so great why do they need to extend the deadline for buying it?

Washington Examiner Editorial:
President Obama has touted the success of the second year of open enrollment for his signature healthcare law. “The Affordable Care Act is working,” Obama said in a Facebook video. “It’s working a little better than we anticipated.” But courtesy of the Department of Health and Human Services, we have a signal that all may not be going a smoothly as the administration would have us believe.

Last Friday, HHS announced that it was effectively extending the Feb. 15 deadline for individuals to purchase insurance through Obamacare, so that those who claim that they didn’t know about the tax penalties on the uninsured could have more time to sign up for coverage. This is ridiculous on several levels.

To start, it's yet another indication that any deadline that the administration sets is merely written on water, subject to arbitrary changes. Furthermore, the individual mandate has been one of the most publicized aspects of the healthcare law and the subject of a major Supreme Court case. Sure, not everybody follows the news, but typically the federal government isn’t keen on cutting slack to people who aren’t aware of the law.

In addition, signing up for insurance now wouldn’t protect individuals against any fines they owe for not having insurance in 2014, but it would prevent a tax penalty from being assessed for the current tax year when they file taxes in 2016. The administration’s decision, thus, is what poker players would call a tell. The move is an indication that enrollment isn’t going as well as hoped and they want more time to sign people up.
...
There is more.

This program is so bad that they keep having to change the rules in hopes of avoiding more political fallout from implementing.

Byron York has more on the Democrat retreat from the effects of their own policy.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Bin Laden's concern about Zarqawi's remains