More Unraveling
The Obama administration announced Friday that it would significantly scale back the health law’s requirements that new insurance marketplaces verify consumers’ income and health insurance status.
Instead, the federal government will rely more heavily on consumers’ self-reported information until 2015, when it plans to have stronger verification systems in place. (Washington Post)
Best quote:
[The government is in] “triage mode. They have tried to figure out what they need to do right now and what they can delay until later. And they are very low on resources.”
Timothy S. Jost
Is this a play to get as many people as possible into the system?
I hope so, somebody needs to be steering this ship.
I don’t know. I think I might prefer careening aimlessly to directed foolishness.
Costs will go through the roof, but nobody can blame politicians because, without the Medicaid provision, this isn’t the bill that they passed.
You’re right. This thing can go anywhere now because nobody is really culpable.
Can they really just change things like that? Is that even legal?
I’m not a proponent of either the individual or the employer mandate. At the NCPA we’ve always maintained that health insurance should be personal & portable, with guaranteed renewability conditional with credible continual coverage.
By deciding that income will not be verified; nor will past coverage be verified, this serves to encourage people to forgo coverage until 1) they get caught; 2) they get sick. Nether occurrence will promote a stable health insurance market.
If President Obama can unilaterally delay enforcement of Obamacare without Congressional action or input, can a future Republican president decide not to enforce Obamacare at all?
If the notion has merit, perhaps future Republican presidents can unilaterally decide not to enforce the capital gains tax. Or the Clean Air Act. Or federal gun laws.
While I would personally be in a favor of not enforcing those things, widespread action of this nature would rip apart this country that is already wearing at the seams. This is a very grave precedent.
“The Obama administration announced Friday that it would significantly scale back the health law’s requirements that new insurance marketplaces verify consumers’ income and health insurance status.”
– Everyone is seeing what this team truly is, a disaster.
Which team?
Oh boy, even before it’s implementation, there is already evidence of significant confusion. When you try to create significant reforms, you need to do it carefully and take your time, which was not the case in this instance.
If a person is devious enough, they can understate their income in January 2014 when they sign up for the exchanges, and get a higher subsidy.
However at the end of the year, if they are a typical taxpayer, there will be W-2’s and 1099’s that show how much they are really earning in 2014.
Thus after they file their taxes in April 2015, there will be a big clawback from the IRS.
This is still extremely messy in terms of having a steady pool of insureds. Not to mention a monstrous waste of national time.
It would have been far simpler to just expand Medicare to those in greatest need, and raise the overall payroll tax by 1 or 2 per cent to accomplish this. The incredible bureaucratic effort to create precise subsidies for each person may not be worth it.