There's panic in the Obama administration over the ObamaCare rollout, according to a couple of articles that appear online today. HHS is asking Insurers to ignore another deadline, accept partial payments, extend coverage options, and to treat out of network providers as if they are in network.
The Department of Health and Human Services said this afternoon that it will extend coverage options for individuals currently enrolled in the law’s temporary high-risk pool program through the end of January, instead of allowing the program to end on December 31 as originally planned. It will also require private insurers selling policies in the law's insurance exchanges to accept payment up until December 31 of this year for coverage than begins January 1.
In addition, HHS said it would “strongly encourage” insurers to take other "transitional" steps over the next month as well—steps like accepting partial pre-payment for coverage that begins on January 1 as a “down payment” in lieu of full payment prior to the start of coverage and allowing people who sign up after the December 23 deadline to begin coverage on January 1. HHS also said it hoped insurers would accept out of network providers as in-network for “acute episodes” or in cases in which a provider was listed in an insurer’s enrollment directory but dropped out after an individual’s enrollment date.
It's very clear that ObamaCare is not getting the warm reception that the White House planned on.
This is the administrative version of the Democrats’ political strategy since Obamacare was first passed, which has also been built on the hope that public opinion was about to turn around any minute, and they just need a little bit of time. With this latest step, they’re pushing what appear to be huge problems off by a couple of weeks (in some cases days), and it’s not clear why they think things will be very different at that point.
It's a predictable White reaction. Ignore the law and lean on insurance companies to keep things moving along at all cost.
The move also puts HHS in the position of playing the role central manager of the American health-care system—telling private insurers to do various things that have nothing in particular to do with the law, as though they work for the government. It is an eerie prefiguration of where the administration would like to get with this system, but it’s also surely something they didn’t want to be doing so publicly at this stage.
The race is on the get the subsidy checks in the mail. There is almost no chance that a majority of Americans are going to come around to the idea that ObamaCare was a good idea. However, there is one thing that might help progressive prospects come November 2014, and that's setting the hook with subsidies. If enough Americans can be switched over to subidized policies, and quickly, maybe the fear of losing them will stop what looks like an oncoming landslide against the Democrats.
But Democrats are not entirely without hope. They have the IRS on their side. What was once inexcusable will soon become law if Obama has his way.
In the media blackout of Thanksgiving week, the Treasury Department dumped a new proposal to govern the political activity of 501(c)(4) groups. The administration claims this rule is needed to clarify confusing tax laws. Hardly. The rule is the IRS's new targeting program—only this time systematic, more effective, and with the force of law.
That this rule was meant to crack down on the White House's political opponents was never in doubt. What is new is the growing concern by House Ways and Means Committee investigators that the regulation was reverse-engineered—designed to isolate and shut down the same tea party groups victimized in the first targeting round. Treasury appears to have combed through those tea party applications, compiled all the groups' main activities, and then restricted those activities in the new rule.
"The committee has reviewed thousands of tax exempt applications," says House Ways & Means Chairman Dave Camp. "The new regulation so closely mirrors the abused tea-party group applications, it leads me to question if this new proposed regulation is simply another form of targeting."
With targeting of Tea party groups legalized, the IRS will be authorized to limit opposition campaign spending and disrupt conservative election efforts. We don't have White House panic here. Maybe some congressional Democrats have grounds for worry, but only in the short run. The White House is methodically transforming America into a place where the various agencies of the government are enlisted to keep progressives in power.
It's the rest of us who ought to panic.
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