Just as an update, I still haven't been able to sign up for shit, so I'm definitely going to have a lapse in coverage. And for what? Because the government thinks it knows better how I should spend my money? And back to whoever it was that was saying high deductible plans are shit...please do yourself a favor and take some basic economic courses.
"They were the ones who heard the promise, if you like what you’ve got you can keep it," he said, referring to people who are now receiving cancellation letters from insurers. "I personally believe, even if it takes a change in the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to these people and let them keep what they got." - Bill Clinton
2003: San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, Seattle; 2005: Monterrey; 2006: Chicago 1 & 2, Grand Rapids, Cleveland, Detroit; 2008: West Palm Beach, Tampa; 2009: Austin, LA 3 & 4, San Diego; 2010: Kansas City, St. Louis, Columbus, Indianapolis; 2011: PJ20 1 & 2; 2012: Missoula; 2013: Dallas, Oklahoma City, Seattle; 2014: Tulsa; 2016: Columbia, New York City 1 & 2; 2018: London, Seattle 1 & 2; 2021: Ohana; 2022: Oklahoma City
"They were the ones who heard the promise, if you like what you’ve got you can keep it," he said, referring to people who are now receiving cancellation letters from insurers. "I personally believe, even if it takes a change in the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to these people and let them keep what they got." - Bill Clinton
I'm probably the only, I guess I'd be labeled conservative :? that I know who actually liked Bill Clinton. Nice to see him stepping up.
As a side note...my wife and I have thought about just slashing our pay...that way we will be eligible for tax credits. We've found that we'd be better off financially if we actually just made less money. Who knew?
"They were the ones who heard the promise, if you like what you’ve got you can keep it," he said, referring to people who are now receiving cancellation letters from insurers. "I personally believe, even if it takes a change in the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to these people and let them keep what they got." - Bill Clinton
I'm probably the only, I guess I'd be labeled conservative :? that I know who actually liked Bill Clinton. Nice to see him stepping up.
As a side note...my wife and I have thought about just slashing our pay...that way we will be eligible for tax credits. We've found that we'd be better off financially if we actually just made less money. Who knew?
That was the plan all along.
“We the people are the rightful masters of bothCongress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.” Abraham Lincoln
As a side note...my wife and I have thought about just slashing our pay...that way we will be eligible for tax credits. We've found that we'd be better off financially if we actually just made less money. Who knew?
I think your side note is the portion of your post that most directly communicates your message. Isn't this the same truth that has been professed since the very first anti-socialist clamoring began along time ago? If producers are penalized for producing, or if their fruits are unlawfully redistributed, they will simply stop producing. In school I heard it as a "curved grading" analogy. When the C students realize they will get Bs anyway, and the B students realize they will get As anyway, they will never strive for improvement. At the same time, the A students, after realizing they get nothing for their efforts,will likely revert to being B students or worse. B students will likely even become C students. The whole class is thus degraded.
Obamacare is bad law trying to solve bad law. It is dishonest. The courts method of asserting its constitutionality was disingenuous. And, while I hate to side with right wing talk radio, I'm pretty sure they are dead right about the website "glitches" - purely intentional method of disabling people from discovering the true cost of the program by simply not allowing them to sign up. There can be no honest discourse on the ramifications, because those ramifications have been deliberately delayed in a most insidious way.
If I was to smile and I held out my hand
If I opened it now would you not understand?
I think your side note is the portion of your post that most directly communicates your message. Isn't this the same truth that has been professed since the very first anti-socialist clamoring began along time ago? If producers are penalized for producing, or if their fruits are unlawfully redistributed, they will simply stop producing. In school I heard it as a "curved grading" analogy. When the C students realize they will get Bs anyway, and the B students realize they will get As anyway, they will never strive for improvement. At the same time, the A students, after realizing they get nothing for their efforts,will likely revert to being B students or worse. B students will likely even become C students. The whole class is thus degraded.
Obamacare is bad law trying to solve bad law. It is dishonest. The courts method of asserting its constitutionality was disingenuous. And, while I hate to side with right wing talk radio, I'm pretty sure they are dead right about the website "glitches" - purely intentional method of disabling people from discovering the true cost of the program by simply not allowing them to sign up. There can be no honest discourse on the ramifications, because those ramifications have been deliberately delayed in a most insidious way.
It's no joke. Everything you said is spot on, and I was dead serious. We've put pen to paper and when you consider the savings in taxes, the credits you get, the healthcare savings, and we have 2 kids so there's earned income credit, we could slash our pay by a ton and actually still end up having the same disposable income. Not to mention, our business saves a ton of money, by not having to pay in so much payroll tax. It's like win-win-win. It's so fucked up, and people who don't know any better or are just hell bent on making the "rich" pay their fair share, just lap it up. The extra money I pay myself actually does nothing for me. I pay more in taxes, my business pays more taxes, I'll pay more in healthcare and I won't see any of it credited back to me. So I'd rather just pay myself the bare minimum, and then I can just put the surplus that would have gone to me, back into my business and write off the money for new equipment, improvements, advertising, etc. instead. What a fucked up world we live in where paying yourself less actually makes more financial sense. :roll:
"They were the ones who heard the promise, if you like what you’ve got you can keep it," he said, referring to people who are now receiving cancellation letters from insurers. "I personally believe, even if it takes a change in the law, the president should honor the commitment the federal government made to these people and let them keep what they got." - Bill Clinton
If Obama follows Clinton's advice, the insurance companies are going to freak the fuck out. I think it's too late for that. Plus that would destroy the infrastructure on how the plan would fund itself.
Obama should call Doc Brown to see if he can go back in time and let Cruz get his way. Or maybe chanting the words "Klaatu, Barada, Nikto" will help.
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hedonist
standing on the edge of forever Posts: 24,524
I think your side note is the portion of your post that most directly communicates your message. Isn't this the same truth that has been professed since the very first anti-socialist clamoring began along time ago? If producers are penalized for producing, or if their fruits are unlawfully redistributed, they will simply stop producing. In school I heard it as a "curved grading" analogy. When the C students realize they will get Bs anyway, and the B students realize they will get As anyway, they will never strive for improvement. At the same time, the A students, after realizing they get nothing for their efforts,will likely revert to being B students or worse. B students will likely even become C students. The whole class is thus degraded.
Obamacare is bad law trying to solve bad law. It is dishonest. The courts method of asserting its constitutionality was disingenuous. And, while I hate to side with right wing talk radio, I'm pretty sure they are dead right about the website "glitches" - purely intentional method of disabling people from discovering the true cost of the program by simply not allowing them to sign up. There can be no honest discourse on the ramifications, because those ramifications have been deliberately delayed in a most insidious way.
It's no joke. Everything you said is spot on, and I was dead serious. We've put pen to paper and when you consider the savings in taxes, the credits you get, the healthcare savings, and we have 2 kids so there's earned income credit, we could slash our pay by a ton and actually still end up having the same disposable income. Not to mention, our business saves a ton of money, by not having to pay in so much payroll tax. It's like win-win-win. It's so fucked up, and people who don't know any better or are just hell bent on making the "rich" pay their fair share, just lap it up. The extra money I pay myself actually does nothing for me. I pay more in taxes, my business pays more taxes, I'll pay more in healthcare and I won't see any of it credited back to me. So I'd rather just pay myself the bare minimum, and then I can just put the surplus that would have gone to me, back into my business and write off the money for new equipment, improvements, advertising, etc. instead. What a fucked up world we live in where paying yourself less actually makes more financial sense. :roll:
Pretty much with you both. Just so fucked upside-down.
Shawshank, continued good wishes to you and your wife, and anyone else in this sad position.
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unsung
I stopped by on March 7 2024. First time in many years, had to update payment info. Hope all is well. Politicians suck. Bye. Posts: 9,487
100,000 have registered (but not completed) on Obamacare.
5,000,000 have had their policies cancelled under Obamacare.
Of the 100,000, only 27,000 were registered under federal exchanges that through 2014 have $2,500,000,000 taxpayer dollars earmarked to fund the federal exchanges. Obama needed to average 39,000 per day to meet his 2/15/14 goal.
Close to 400,000 were registered under Medicaid, which is now considered part of the ACA. Insurance companies have to be freaking out as much as red-state dems and those that make over $49,500 per year (1 percenters?). The burden to fund this plan is being placed on the middle-class and kids that like to do keg stands and have casual sex. What could go wrong?
My Magic 8-Ball has just delivered me a new message! Behold ... we will have to endure a similar mess one year from now when the one-year exemption on businesses ends!!!
What I can't fathom is that he said everyone could keep their plan, yet it's his OWN legislation that has outlawed these millions of plans. It's not just the insurance companies just dropping people for the heck of it. They are dropping them because HIS LAW outlawed them.
If that's not a complete model for incompetence, I don't know what is.
For me, this health insurance law disaster is the worst thing I've seen come out of our government in awhile and that's saying something.
And maybe this isn't news to anyone else, but I'm a bit slow on getting the details since they make me so angry when I hear them that I don't go out looking for them.
The only people we should try to get even with...
...are those who've helped us.
Right 'round the corner could be bigger than ourselves.
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unsung
I stopped by on March 7 2024. First time in many years, had to update payment info. Hope all is well. Politicians suck. Bye. Posts: 9,487
This move by the President is illegal, for a constitutional law man he sure forgot a lot.
And yes, he just vindicated everything Ted Cruz did.
"there he goes again.
when his policies fail, president obama ignores the law. he delayed the employer mandate on his own: now he's trying to fix an insurance market that he broke by ignoring the laws he wrote.
that's not how a democracy works. he's a president not a king.
enough is enough. it's time to delay the individual mandate.
the Obama administration can't restore cancelled insurance policies, and can't fix the obamacare website fast enough to save the market.
because of aca, millions of americans have had their health insurance policies canceled. millions more will be left uninsured and in violation of federal law - through no fault of their own."
- Mr. Jay Sekulow
live and let live...unless it violates the pearligious doctrine.
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unsung
I stopped by on March 7 2024. First time in many years, had to update payment info. Hope all is well. Politicians suck. Bye. Posts: 9,487
If aliens from outer space read today’s newspapers, they would assume that America is a dictatorship, not a republic, and that President Obama has the authority to pass and repeal laws all by himself, though executive decree.
Writing about President Obama’s decision to allow insurers to temporarily reissue certain policies cancelled due to the Affordable Care Act, The Washington Post stated, “President Obama relented to pressure from the public and his own party Thursday and changed one of the bedrock requirements of the new health-care law to fulfill his promise to allow people to keep their insurance plans if they want.” But as every schoolchild used to be taught, Presidents cannot “change” the “bedrock requirements” of a federal law, only Congress can, since only it has the power to pass and repeal legislation. For a bill to become law, or for a law to be repealed, legislation must first pass both Houses of Congress before the President can act on it.
The president’s change in the law is plainly illegal, as Eugene Kontorovich, who teaches constitutional law at Northwestern University, has noted. As Kontorovich points out, President Obama’s change does not simply suspend requirements imposed on insurers, but also imposes “new obligations” on insurers that seek to take advantage of the waiver, something that is quintessentially legislative, rather than executive, in character. Thus, even if Obama had the statutory authority to suspend ACA requirements to allow insurers to continue offering plans that do not meet the new law’s requirements (no statutory authority was cited in yesterday’s letter announcing the change), he lacks the ability to condition such waivers on criteria imposed by executive fiat.
While the change is illegal, it doesn’t really do much for people’s whose insurance policies have been cancelled, since the conditions attached to it, and other features of the change, are so onerous that most insurers won’t find it feasible to reissue cancelled policies. Basically, it is designed to give the president an excuse to scapegoat insurers.
As Professor Kontorovich notes,
President Obama in his speech on “fixing” the Affordable Care Act today did not specify what statutory authority, if any, he thinks authorizes him to make such dictats. Given the gargantuan length of the ObamaCare statute, he might still be looking. . . the Chief Executive has some room to decide how strongly to enforce a law, and the timing of enforcement. But here, Obama is apparently suspending the enforcement of a law for a year – simply to head off actual legislation not to his liking. Congress is working on legislation quite similar to the president’s fix, but with differences he considers objectionable. This further demonstrates the primarily legislative nature of the fix. Indeed, the fix goes far beyond “non-enforcement” because it requires insurers to take certain new action to enjoy the delay. This is thus not simply a delay, but a new law. The “fix” amounts to new legislation – but enacted without Congress. The President has no constitutional authority to rewrite statutes, especially in ways that impose new obligations on people, and that is what the fix seems to entail. And of course, this is not the first such extra-statutory suspension of key ObamaCare provisions.
Law professor Jonathan H. Adler also observes that Obama’s change was done in a way that is illegal. Nicholas Bagley reviews relevant law and finds that “the administrative fix may be vulnerable to even sharper claims of illegality than the delay of the employer mandate.”
Although the change is illegal, it won’t affect a substantial percentage of cancelled insurance policies. Cancelled policies will mostly stay cancelled. At The Washington Post‘s Wonkblog, Robert Laszewksi explains why:
This means that the insurance companies have 32 days to reprogram their computer systems for policies, rates, and eligibility, send notices to the policyholders via US Mail, send a very complex letter that describes just what the differences are between specific policies and Obamacare compliant plans, ask the consumer for their decision — and give them a reasonable time to make that decision — and then enter those decisions back into their systems without creating massive billing, claim payment, and provider eligibility list mistakes.
The Washington Post‘s Sarah Kliff, who has sometimes served as a cheerleader for Obamacare in the past, considers insurers’ dilemma as a result of the change:
nsurers are in a bit of a tricky spot. It will look pretty bad if they don’t allow people to keep enrolling in their 2013 plans; as the president said, its a whole lot harder to blame the cancellations on Obamacare. But if they do allow that to go forward, it could screw up the risk pool in the new insurance marketplaces by letting the younger and healthy people (who would likely stick with their skimpier plans) stay out of the exchange. They’d essentially be siphoning off the exact same customers they were hoping to woo into the exchanges.
Professor Adler suggests that the change may be a legal bait-and-switch that fools insurers into reissuing policies with limits that later can’t be enforced, and are deemed illegal, based on language in the Affordable Care Act:
[T]he Administration is not changing the law. It’s just announcing it will not enforce federal law (while simultaneously threatening to veto legislation that would authorize the step the President has decided to take).
Does this make the renewal of non-compliant policies legal? No. The legal requirement remains on the books so the relevant health insurance plans remain illegal under federal law. The President’s decision does not change relevant state laws either. So insurers will still need to obtain approval from state insurance commissioners. This typically requires submitting rates and plan specifications for approval. This can take some time, and is disruptive because most insurance companies have already set their offerings for the next year. It’s no wonder that some insurance commissioners have already indicated they have no plans to approve non-compliant plans.
Yet even if state commissioners approve the plans, they will still be illegal under federal law. Given this fact, why would any insurance company agree to renew such a plan? It’s nice that regulators may forbear enforcing the relevant regulatory requirements, but this is not the only source of potential legal jeopardy. So, for instance, what happens when there’s a legal dispute under one of these policies? Say, for instance, an insurance company denies payment for something that is not covered under the policy but that would have been covered under the PPACA and the insured sues? Would an insurance company really want to have to defend this decision in court? After all, this would place the insurance company in the position of seeking judicial enforcement of an illegal insurance policy. If there’s an answer to this, I haven’t seen it.
Obama may pay a price for scapegoating insurers. As Reason magazine’s Peter Suderman points out, the administration needs the cooperation of insurance companies if the law is going to succeed:
Obama is creating a long-term policy problem in order to solve a short-term political problem. Even if this temporarily reduces some of today’s political pressure, those long-term policy problems will rebound to create additional political problems as time goes by. Premiums will rise, and if consumer demand turns out to be lower than expected as a result, plans may withdraw from the market. At the same time, insurers, who have been targeted by the administration for blame and had their assurances about the state of the law (and thus their business plan) upended, will be less likely to cooperate with the administration. They are already frustrated with the administration, and this will hasten the break between them. The opposition of insurers will add a new layer of opposition that the administration must contend with in order to make the law—which is built around the goal of making insurance coverage accessible—work.
The Heritage Foundation says the president’s action is an illegal ”PR” move:
President Obama has told Obamacare’s critics that the law is “settled” and “here to stay.” But today he is saying he’ll violate the law to put a Band-Aid on it for another year. That’s in addition to the one-year delay in the employer mandate and numerous other “fixes” and delays.
The President is announcing his “fix” to the problem of millions of canceled policies: According to press reports, the President’s “plan would allow people to keep their plans into 2014,” by allowing the sale of insurance plans that don’t meet the law’s new requirements.
There’s one problem—the President’s promise that his new “plan” can allow people to keep their plans is just as flawed and false as his original “like your plan/keep it” pledge. The law itself is clear: Obamacare’s new benefit mandates—the requirement to cover all individuals with pre-existing conditions, the new “essential benefits,” and mandates increasing the percentage of health costs insurance plans must cover—all take effect on January 1, 2014.
The National Review’s Rich Lowry also questions the legality of the administrative “fix”:
In attempting to stem the panic of congressional Democrats, Obama has thrown the insurers who had bought into Obamacare under the bus, a move that itself could harm the law’s long term prospects. He has once again acted unilaterally and (presumably) lawlessly rather than going to Congress, but he has undercut his own spin that Obamacare is the immutable “law of the land” and in his press conference, admitted that many of the law’s failures are on him rather than the result of Republican sabotage. We’ll see now whether the president has at least stabilized his position on Capitol Hill. Regardless, a bad day for him and the law.
Bloomberg News’ Ramesh Ponnuru expects the change to only make the law worse:
In recent weeks, proponents of Obamacare have been arguing that we shouldn’t make too much of its early troubles, because President George W. Bush’s prescription-drug program saw early fumbles, too. (The people behind Obamacare may not be good at building websites, but they’re great at manufacturing excuses.) It’s perverse, of course, to suggest that the difficulties of a smaller, far less complex program are a good omen for Obamacare. But the bigger problem is that Obamacare is vulnerable to adverse selection in a way that Bush’s program was not.
Slate’s David Weigel, no fan of the GOP, agrees with it that the President’s unilateral change ”won’t restore all the canceled plans. Republicans (and anyone who’s talked to any insurer, ever) know this is not the case. After this week, Republicans will be able to react to any new stories about canceled plans by pointing out that, hey, they wanted to fix this, but the president arrogantly refused them and went with his own plan.”
If unilateral administrative “fixes” were legal, there are lots of other things about Obamacare that are even worse and cry out to be fixed. The Affordable Care Act contains massive marriage penalties that discriminate against married people, and huge work disincentives for some older workers. It has slashed hiring, cut economic growth, and induced employers to replace full-time workers with part-time employees, driving even unions that once backed it to seek its repeal or replacement. And its medical device tax has caused layoffs by medical manufacturers.
96 Randall's Island II
98 CAA
00 Virginia Beach;Camden I; Jones Beach III
05 Borgata Night I; Wachovia Center
06 Letterman Show; Webcast (guy in blue shirt), Camden I; DC
08 Camden I; Camden II; DC
09 Phillie III
10 MSG II
13 Wrigley Field
16 Phillie II
If we found out that aliens from outer space were reading our newspapers... wouldn't that be a bigger news story than Obamacare?
...
I know it wouldn't be bigger than Kardashian news... but, I'm pretty sure it would make front page news... just below the Kardahian news item about them buying solid gold toilet paper.
Allen Fieldhouse, home of the 2008 NCAA men's Basketball Champions! Go Jayhawks!
Hail, Hail!!!
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unsung
I stopped by on March 7 2024. First time in many years, had to update payment info. Hope all is well. Politicians suck. Bye. Posts: 9,487
Comments
I wonder how much tax money was used to fund the geniuses behind this ad campaign?
And you know this marketing ploy went through a shitload of reviews and OK's. More than one or two people creamed themselves over such brilliance.
I'm waiting on further incarnations of this new term...
D'oh!-surance
'fro-surance
Toe-surance
Whoa!-surance
No-surance
Still idiocy on both fronts.
I'm probably the only, I guess I'd be labeled conservative :? that I know who actually liked Bill Clinton. Nice to see him stepping up.
@ 4:03
http://www.ozy.com/c-notes/assessing-the-healthcare-rollout-with-bill-clinton/3639.article
As a side note...my wife and I have thought about just slashing our pay...that way we will be eligible for tax credits. We've found that we'd be better off financially if we actually just made less money. Who knew?
That was the plan all along.
I think your side note is the portion of your post that most directly communicates your message. Isn't this the same truth that has been professed since the very first anti-socialist clamoring began along time ago? If producers are penalized for producing, or if their fruits are unlawfully redistributed, they will simply stop producing. In school I heard it as a "curved grading" analogy. When the C students realize they will get Bs anyway, and the B students realize they will get As anyway, they will never strive for improvement. At the same time, the A students, after realizing they get nothing for their efforts,will likely revert to being B students or worse. B students will likely even become C students. The whole class is thus degraded.
Obamacare is bad law trying to solve bad law. It is dishonest. The courts method of asserting its constitutionality was disingenuous. And, while I hate to side with right wing talk radio, I'm pretty sure they are dead right about the website "glitches" - purely intentional method of disabling people from discovering the true cost of the program by simply not allowing them to sign up. There can be no honest discourse on the ramifications, because those ramifications have been deliberately delayed in a most insidious way.
If I opened it now would you not understand?
It's no joke. Everything you said is spot on, and I was dead serious. We've put pen to paper and when you consider the savings in taxes, the credits you get, the healthcare savings, and we have 2 kids so there's earned income credit, we could slash our pay by a ton and actually still end up having the same disposable income. Not to mention, our business saves a ton of money, by not having to pay in so much payroll tax. It's like win-win-win. It's so fucked up, and people who don't know any better or are just hell bent on making the "rich" pay their fair share, just lap it up. The extra money I pay myself actually does nothing for me. I pay more in taxes, my business pays more taxes, I'll pay more in healthcare and I won't see any of it credited back to me. So I'd rather just pay myself the bare minimum, and then I can just put the surplus that would have gone to me, back into my business and write off the money for new equipment, improvements, advertising, etc. instead. What a fucked up world we live in where paying yourself less actually makes more financial sense. :roll:
Obama should call Doc Brown to see if he can go back in time and let Cruz get his way. Or maybe chanting the words "Klaatu, Barada, Nikto" will help.
Shawshank, continued good wishes to you and your wife, and anyone else in this sad position.
5,000,000 have had their policies cancelled under Obamacare.
Close to 400,000 were registered under Medicaid, which is now considered part of the ACA. Insurance companies have to be freaking out as much as red-state dems and those that make over $49,500 per year (1 percenters?). The burden to fund this plan is being placed on the middle-class and kids that like to do keg stands and have casual sex. What could go wrong?
My Magic 8-Ball has just delivered me a new message! Behold ... we will have to endure a similar mess one year from now when the one-year exemption on businesses ends!!!
If that's not a complete model for incompetence, I don't know what is.
For me, this health insurance law disaster is the worst thing I've seen come out of our government in awhile and that's saying something.
And maybe this isn't news to anyone else, but I'm a bit slow on getting the details since they make me so angry when I hear them that I don't go out looking for them.
...are those who've helped us.
Right 'round the corner could be bigger than ourselves.
I hope it is farther reaching and much more extended than this last hiccup.
Oh, sweet irony ...
And yes, he just vindicated everything Ted Cruz did.
what "move"?
are we talking about ACA in general or something just happened?
If I opened it now would you not understand?
"there he goes again.
when his policies fail, president obama ignores the law. he delayed the employer mandate on his own: now he's trying to fix an insurance market that he broke by ignoring the laws he wrote.
that's not how a democracy works. he's a president not a king.
enough is enough. it's time to delay the individual mandate.
the Obama administration can't restore cancelled insurance policies, and can't fix the obamacare website fast enough to save the market.
because of aca, millions of americans have had their health insurance policies canceled. millions more will be left uninsured and in violation of federal law - through no fault of their own."
- Mr. Jay Sekulow
yesterday: Obamz sez insurance companies can continue to sell shitty insurance
today: "oh noes, I'm so upset, he didn't follow the constitution"
me: ha ha ha fuckin ha...
If aliens from outer space read today’s newspapers, they would assume that America is a dictatorship, not a republic, and that President Obama has the authority to pass and repeal laws all by himself, though executive decree.
Writing about President Obama’s decision to allow insurers to temporarily reissue certain policies cancelled due to the Affordable Care Act, The Washington Post stated, “President Obama relented to pressure from the public and his own party Thursday and changed one of the bedrock requirements of the new health-care law to fulfill his promise to allow people to keep their insurance plans if they want.” But as every schoolchild used to be taught, Presidents cannot “change” the “bedrock requirements” of a federal law, only Congress can, since only it has the power to pass and repeal legislation. For a bill to become law, or for a law to be repealed, legislation must first pass both Houses of Congress before the President can act on it.
The president’s change in the law is plainly illegal, as Eugene Kontorovich, who teaches constitutional law at Northwestern University, has noted. As Kontorovich points out, President Obama’s change does not simply suspend requirements imposed on insurers, but also imposes “new obligations” on insurers that seek to take advantage of the waiver, something that is quintessentially legislative, rather than executive, in character. Thus, even if Obama had the statutory authority to suspend ACA requirements to allow insurers to continue offering plans that do not meet the new law’s requirements (no statutory authority was cited in yesterday’s letter announcing the change), he lacks the ability to condition such waivers on criteria imposed by executive fiat.
While the change is illegal, it doesn’t really do much for people’s whose insurance policies have been cancelled, since the conditions attached to it, and other features of the change, are so onerous that most insurers won’t find it feasible to reissue cancelled policies. Basically, it is designed to give the president an excuse to scapegoat insurers.
As Professor Kontorovich notes,
President Obama in his speech on “fixing” the Affordable Care Act today did not specify what statutory authority, if any, he thinks authorizes him to make such dictats. Given the gargantuan length of the ObamaCare statute, he might still be looking. . . the Chief Executive has some room to decide how strongly to enforce a law, and the timing of enforcement. But here, Obama is apparently suspending the enforcement of a law for a year – simply to head off actual legislation not to his liking. Congress is working on legislation quite similar to the president’s fix, but with differences he considers objectionable. This further demonstrates the primarily legislative nature of the fix. Indeed, the fix goes far beyond “non-enforcement” because it requires insurers to take certain new action to enjoy the delay. This is thus not simply a delay, but a new law. The “fix” amounts to new legislation – but enacted without Congress. The President has no constitutional authority to rewrite statutes, especially in ways that impose new obligations on people, and that is what the fix seems to entail. And of course, this is not the first such extra-statutory suspension of key ObamaCare provisions.
Law professor Jonathan H. Adler also observes that Obama’s change was done in a way that is illegal. Nicholas Bagley reviews relevant law and finds that “the administrative fix may be vulnerable to even sharper claims of illegality than the delay of the employer mandate.”
Although the change is illegal, it won’t affect a substantial percentage of cancelled insurance policies. Cancelled policies will mostly stay cancelled. At The Washington Post‘s Wonkblog, Robert Laszewksi explains why:
This means that the insurance companies have 32 days to reprogram their computer systems for policies, rates, and eligibility, send notices to the policyholders via US Mail, send a very complex letter that describes just what the differences are between specific policies and Obamacare compliant plans, ask the consumer for their decision — and give them a reasonable time to make that decision — and then enter those decisions back into their systems without creating massive billing, claim payment, and provider eligibility list mistakes.
The Washington Post‘s Sarah Kliff, who has sometimes served as a cheerleader for Obamacare in the past, considers insurers’ dilemma as a result of the change:
nsurers are in a bit of a tricky spot. It will look pretty bad if they don’t allow people to keep enrolling in their 2013 plans; as the president said, its a whole lot harder to blame the cancellations on Obamacare. But if they do allow that to go forward, it could screw up the risk pool in the new insurance marketplaces by letting the younger and healthy people (who would likely stick with their skimpier plans) stay out of the exchange. They’d essentially be siphoning off the exact same customers they were hoping to woo into the exchanges.
Professor Adler suggests that the change may be a legal bait-and-switch that fools insurers into reissuing policies with limits that later can’t be enforced, and are deemed illegal, based on language in the Affordable Care Act:
[T]he Administration is not changing the law. It’s just announcing it will not enforce federal law (while simultaneously threatening to veto legislation that would authorize the step the President has decided to take).
Does this make the renewal of non-compliant policies legal? No. The legal requirement remains on the books so the relevant health insurance plans remain illegal under federal law. The President’s decision does not change relevant state laws either. So insurers will still need to obtain approval from state insurance commissioners. This typically requires submitting rates and plan specifications for approval. This can take some time, and is disruptive because most insurance companies have already set their offerings for the next year. It’s no wonder that some insurance commissioners have already indicated they have no plans to approve non-compliant plans.
Yet even if state commissioners approve the plans, they will still be illegal under federal law. Given this fact, why would any insurance company agree to renew such a plan? It’s nice that regulators may forbear enforcing the relevant regulatory requirements, but this is not the only source of potential legal jeopardy. So, for instance, what happens when there’s a legal dispute under one of these policies? Say, for instance, an insurance company denies payment for something that is not covered under the policy but that would have been covered under the PPACA and the insured sues? Would an insurance company really want to have to defend this decision in court? After all, this would place the insurance company in the position of seeking judicial enforcement of an illegal insurance policy. If there’s an answer to this, I haven’t seen it.
Obama may pay a price for scapegoating insurers. As Reason magazine’s Peter Suderman points out, the administration needs the cooperation of insurance companies if the law is going to succeed:
Obama is creating a long-term policy problem in order to solve a short-term political problem. Even if this temporarily reduces some of today’s political pressure, those long-term policy problems will rebound to create additional political problems as time goes by. Premiums will rise, and if consumer demand turns out to be lower than expected as a result, plans may withdraw from the market. At the same time, insurers, who have been targeted by the administration for blame and had their assurances about the state of the law (and thus their business plan) upended, will be less likely to cooperate with the administration. They are already frustrated with the administration, and this will hasten the break between them. The opposition of insurers will add a new layer of opposition that the administration must contend with in order to make the law—which is built around the goal of making insurance coverage accessible—work.
The Heritage Foundation says the president’s action is an illegal ”PR” move:
President Obama has told Obamacare’s critics that the law is “settled” and “here to stay.” But today he is saying he’ll violate the law to put a Band-Aid on it for another year. That’s in addition to the one-year delay in the employer mandate and numerous other “fixes” and delays.
The President is announcing his “fix” to the problem of millions of canceled policies: According to press reports, the President’s “plan would allow people to keep their plans into 2014,” by allowing the sale of insurance plans that don’t meet the law’s new requirements.
There’s one problem—the President’s promise that his new “plan” can allow people to keep their plans is just as flawed and false as his original “like your plan/keep it” pledge. The law itself is clear: Obamacare’s new benefit mandates—the requirement to cover all individuals with pre-existing conditions, the new “essential benefits,” and mandates increasing the percentage of health costs insurance plans must cover—all take effect on January 1, 2014.
The National Review’s Rich Lowry also questions the legality of the administrative “fix”:
In attempting to stem the panic of congressional Democrats, Obama has thrown the insurers who had bought into Obamacare under the bus, a move that itself could harm the law’s long term prospects. He has once again acted unilaterally and (presumably) lawlessly rather than going to Congress, but he has undercut his own spin that Obamacare is the immutable “law of the land” and in his press conference, admitted that many of the law’s failures are on him rather than the result of Republican sabotage. We’ll see now whether the president has at least stabilized his position on Capitol Hill. Regardless, a bad day for him and the law.
Bloomberg News’ Ramesh Ponnuru expects the change to only make the law worse:
In recent weeks, proponents of Obamacare have been arguing that we shouldn’t make too much of its early troubles, because President George W. Bush’s prescription-drug program saw early fumbles, too. (The people behind Obamacare may not be good at building websites, but they’re great at manufacturing excuses.) It’s perverse, of course, to suggest that the difficulties of a smaller, far less complex program are a good omen for Obamacare. But the bigger problem is that Obamacare is vulnerable to adverse selection in a way that Bush’s program was not.
Slate’s David Weigel, no fan of the GOP, agrees with it that the President’s unilateral change ”won’t restore all the canceled plans. Republicans (and anyone who’s talked to any insurer, ever) know this is not the case. After this week, Republicans will be able to react to any new stories about canceled plans by pointing out that, hey, they wanted to fix this, but the president arrogantly refused them and went with his own plan.”
If unilateral administrative “fixes” were legal, there are lots of other things about Obamacare that are even worse and cry out to be fixed. The Affordable Care Act contains massive marriage penalties that discriminate against married people, and huge work disincentives for some older workers. It has slashed hiring, cut economic growth, and induced employers to replace full-time workers with part-time employees, driving even unions that once backed it to seek its repeal or replacement. And its medical device tax has caused layoffs by medical manufacturers.
98 CAA
00 Virginia Beach;Camden I; Jones Beach III
05 Borgata Night I; Wachovia Center
06 Letterman Show; Webcast (guy in blue shirt), Camden I; DC
08 Camden I; Camden II; DC
09 Phillie III
10 MSG II
13 Wrigley Field
16 Phillie II
...
I know it wouldn't be bigger than Kardashian news... but, I'm pretty sure it would make front page news... just below the Kardahian news item about them buying solid gold toilet paper.
Hail, Hail!!!
The executive branch is not supposed to make laws, otherwise he might as well be King.