Obama Lifts Health Mandate for Those With Canceled Plans -- Bloomberg

[bsteadman]

Obama Lifts Health Mandate for Those With Canceled Plans

Bloomberg
Margaret Talev and Alex Wayne
12/20/2013

Excerpt:

Hundreds of thousands of people whose health plans are being canceled because their coverage doesn’t meet Obamacare rules will be exempt next year from the U.S. mandate that all Americans carry medical insurance.

People losing coverage will now be allowed to buy bare-bones “catastrophic” insurance that the law usually limits to those younger than age 30, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said yesterday. Others can opt out completely without the threat of the fines being imposed next year on the uninsured as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The change will affect fewer than 500,000 people as a Dec. 23 deadline looms to purchase policies for coverage that starts Jan. 1, according to Obama administration figures. Insurers said the exemptions may keep younger, healthier people from buying new coverage through Obamacare, a demographic that is needed to bring balance to the new government-run insurance marketplaces.

“This latest rule change could cause significant instability in the marketplace and lead to further confusion and disruption for consumers,” Karen Ignagni, the president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry’s Washington-based lobbying group, said in an e-mail from a spokesman.

President Barack Obama has been issuing a flurry of last-minute policy changes to give people more time to sign up for his signature domestic policy initiative following a botched rollout of key programs, delays of others and political backlash over the cost and effects of the law.

Republican Response

The latest exemption from the law’s individual mandate would last a year and potentially longer for consumers granted hardship exceptions, according to the guidance issued by CMS’s Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight.

“The sad reality is that when the law takes effect come Jan. 1, more Americans will be without coverage under Obamacare than one year ago,” Representative Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican who is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said in an e-mail. “Rather than more White House delays, waivers, and exemptions, the administration should provide all Americans relief from its failed law.”

The Obama administration yesterday disputed such claims saying it’s impossible for more people to lose coverage than gain coverage because of policy cancellations. Fewer than 500,000 people will lose plans starting Jan. 1 because their policies don’t meet the law’s requirements and they haven’t found new coverage, according to administration officials who briefed reporters yesterday on condition of anonymity.

California Cancellations

California, though, has already reported that more than 1 million policy holders have received letters from their current insurers saying their coverage will be canceled after Dec. 31 because their plans don’t comply with Obamacare.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a Virginia Republican, reiterated his call for a delay in implementing the Affordable Care Act. He said in a statement that the latest exemption shows the law isn’t working and changes to the U.S. health-care system shouldn’t be based on the president’s “random impulses.”

The Obama administration said it’s just trying to give people as many options as needed,

“This is a common-sense clarification of the law,” Joanne Peters, a spokeswoman for U.S. Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, said in an e-mail. “For the limited number of consumers whose plans have been canceled and are seeking coverage, this is one more option.”

Policy Changes

People whose plans are canceled must apply to the government for a hardship exemption from the requirement to carry insurance and submit the letter they received from their current insurer. Once the government approves the exemption, they are eligible to purchase catastrophic plans, which usually have the lowest premium of any coverage sold on exchanges. The plans aren’t eligible for federal subsidies, meaning there’s no discount for the premium.
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[bsteadman]

The Obamacare Chaos Strategy’s Outlines Begin to Emerge

De facto single-payer, by any means necessary.

PJ Media
Tom Blumer
12/20/2013

Excerpt:

On Christmas Eve, it will be three years and nine months since President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, into law.

Seven decades ago, it took less time — 3 years, 8 months and 26 days, from December 7, 1941, to September 2, 1945 — for the nation to endure the attack on Pearl Harbor, rebuild an undermanned and underequipped military, put the nation’s industrial might on a wartime footing, prosecute World War II, complete the Manhattan Project, and force the surrender of Nazi Germany and Japan.

Now we’re supposed to believe, even when given virtually unlimited resources, a 42-month head start, and another three months to make corrections, that the people in our government and the contractors who serve it are so breathtakingly stupid and incredibly incompetent that they can’t properly set up Obamacare’s bureaucracy, create functioning online and offline consumer interfaces, and build the systems required to communicate and interact with insurance companies participating in its federal exchanges.

I certainly don’t.

Evidence supporting what I have contended in my previous two columns — namely that those in charge of implementing Obamacare cannot possibly be as stupid or incompetent as they are allowing themselves to appear — continues to mount.

The most obvious indicators don’t relate to planning and development tasks performed poorly. They instead involve the ones which haven’t been performed at all.

Web site security issues have been ignored from the get-go, to the point where IT security experts insist that no one who cares about the privacy and safety of their personal information should even think about logging on to HealthCare.gov. The government’s response has been to give itself a security waiver and pretend that nothing’s amiss.

Then there’s the system for making subsidy payments to insurance companies for eligible enrollees. There isn’t one.

Henry Chao, deputy chief information officer at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told a House committee in mid-November that “the payment systems, they still need be built.” The government’s response has been to let the insurance companies wing it and estimate the subsidies they’re owed — subject, of course, to “negotiations” on an obviously not level playing field. It’s a safe prediction that this situation will endure well into 2014. One begins to wonder if those systems will ever be built.

Chaos skeptics will have an especially difficult time explaining away the administration’s December 12 move.

That day, it announced that it would “ask” insurance companies to cover virtually any patient who requests medical care in early 2014, whether or not there is any tangible evidence that they have paid their monthly premiums, or have even enrolled. Note that the lack of said evidence is entirely due to the government’s billion-dollar failure to build reliable enrollment and payment systems.

It would appear that doctors, hospitals and other medical providers who have agreed to serve Obamacare patients will also have to see and treat any patient who claims to have enrolled, regardless of whether that provider is in the related insurance plan’s network.
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http://pjmedia.com/blog/obamacare-chaos-strategy/

[bsteadman]

The Ad Hoc Presidency vs. the Constitution

Mediaite
Noah Rothman
12/20/2013

Excerpt:

Lawlessness. It’s not a pleasant word. While it is an accurate description of how this White House has conducted itself, the word offends the sensibilities of both the president’s supporters and the civility crowd. So let’s abstain from using that word. Instead, let’s settle on discussing the ad hoc way in which president views his responsibility to faithfully execute the laws duly passed by a legitimate and coequal legislature.

Late Thursday night, less than a week before the Christmas holiday, the administration unilaterally delayed a Supreme Court-approved tax for a group of people deemed by unelected officials to be special. It is a violation of law. It may very well violate the equal protection clause in the 14th Amendment. It will create chaos in the insurance industry. It is, as has been widely reported, a maneuver of service to the president’s political goal of ensuring nervous Democrats in the Senate are placated.

Of course, Republicans are objecting to the move. But their objections are being dismissed as a reflexive response to a president they oppose merely attempting to make a law they abhor more stable. Is this a fair accusation? Of course not. Republicans object mightily to the Affordable Care Act, but they are demanding it be enforced by the executive as written because this is his constitutional mandate. That’s called consistency.

This is not a unique instance on the part of Republicans. The GOP does object to the implementation of the ACA, preferring it be delayed or repealed altogether, but the party’s grassroots voters and its members in Congress also objected when the president unilaterally declared through executive action that he would refuse to enforce immigration law for young undocumented citizens and the children of illegal immigrants. Republicans railed against the executive appealing to dubious authority to avoid enforcing existing immigration law. That’s called consistency.

And when the Department of Justice, at the direction of the White House, declared that it would no longer enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, Republicans objected, too. Here, the substance of the law was in question. Many Republicans supported the provision signed into law under Bill Clinton, but many also viewed the law as discriminatory – a view supported by a majority of Supreme Court justices who struck down the law in June. Regardless of how most conservatives felt about the legitimacy of DOMA, they objected to the DOJ simply casting aside its obligation to enforce the laws passed by Congress. That is called consistency.

Contrast this behavior with the White House which appears to view the legislature as an institution devised to ratify the will of the executive or be ignored. President Barack Obama and his supporters profess fealty to the Constitution but view its dictates as mere guidelines which can be abandoned if they impede the fleeting political imperative of the moment. But we dare not call this lawlessness. That term might offend.
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http://www.mediaite.com/online/the-a...-constitution/