Good point - if the Employer mandate can be unilaterally delayed when politics raises its head, why not border security ? Note the Left and Right pannin Employer Mandate ball kick to 2015 , for different reasons........
* * *
http://www.correntewire.com/obamacare_clusterfuck_how_is_another_year_going_to_fix_the_employer_mandate
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/07/03/if-obama-can-unilaterally-delay-obamacares-employer-mandate-can-he-delay-new-immigration-provisions-too/
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-07-02/obamacare-reporting-and-shared-responsibility-payments-delayed-until-2015
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 07/02/2013 17:57 -0400
ObamaCare Clusterfuck: "Manual workarounds" now in project scope for CT exchange, as Obama's PR move on the 3-page form caused delay
Submitted by lambert on Fri, 07/05/2013 - 1:56pm
Departments:
What I have been seeing, trying to do Kreminology on ObamaCare's bizarrely secretive implementation, is project managers frantically triaging requirements to get something, anything, out the door; see Colorado, for example. Turns out, and as usual, I haven't been nearly cynical enough. Sarah Kliff does some actual reporting on how things are going with the Connecticut exchange:
At a monthly board meeting of Connecticut’s health insurance exchange, members of the standing-room-only crowd [!!] got a reminder that they, too, were behind schedule. The insurance marketplace they were working on nights and weekends won’t be completely ready on time.“It is highly complex, it’s unprecedented and it’s not going to be smooth,” Kevin Counihan, chief executive of the state’s exchange, Access Health CT, told the group.
Just so long as it's not a "third world experience," eh? Could be deliberate lowballing, but the stories don't read like a PR campaign. Unless the crowd is made up of Obots and the site developers, it's the press and non-profits -- along, I would bet, with the crows and vultures that always circle a prostrate body.
That’s why Connecticut — like other states across the country — has lowered the bar, doing what it can in the time it has left before the health-care law’s major programs are launched Oct. 1.Although the states are promising to provide new marketplaces for individuals to compare and buy health insurance plans, the Web portals will be a bare-bones version of what was initially envisioned.
Why do I think these "bare bones versions" are not going to be like Expedia? And do note Obama's oft-cited PR move to change to the ObamaCare submission form at the last minute butchered the schedule (and I would bet busted the budget as well):
Connecticut has made progress. It was the first state to complete an intensive technology test in which the state’s portal successfully connected to a federal data hub.But officials have learned that good news can have a downside. The state agency spent weeks reprogramming its Web site after the federal government shrank the insurance application from 21 pages to three.
In other words, states that were most committed to ObamaCare (and, one would like to assume, their uninsured citizens) were punished the most.* [BWA-H... It hurts too much.]
And who's impacted by the delay Obama caused? Why, the gay community, since DOMA changes impact the exchanges by changing marriage status. But don't worry! There's a solution:
When the Supreme Court struck down a key element of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, Access Health CT board members cheered. Then, they remembered that it would add to the workload: The marketplace would now need to recognize same-sex marriages, a coding change unlikely to be ready for October.“Everything continues to change all the time,” Van Loon told his staff at a meeting later that day. “We’re going to have to adjust some processes around that. If DOMA requires a manual work-around, we’ll do that.”
Oh, great. So tell me, how does the manual workaround get into the system? Gay people have to travel to whatever office is handling ObamaCare, and fill out the forms on paper? And they get to be second-class citizens again, just this time because Obama started tinkering with his own Rube Goldberg device?** And how is this like Expedia, exactly?
And most importantly of all, can somebody tell me how a "bare bones" site, partially paper-based, is going to attract those critical "young invincibles"? From back in May:
What's one thing you know about young people today, maybe the most obvious thing? That's right: They're totally wired, totally digital, totally computer-savvy. (They are also said by some to multi-task and have very short attention spans.)So if you had an Internet product, and you wanted to turn young people off, right at the point of purchase, what would you do? That's right: You'd build a platform that was "buggy," with a "user experience" that "needs improvement," that has "glitches," and that will take three years to straighten out.Which, my friends, is exactly what ObamaCare's exchanges are going to be like, according to Rahm Emmanuel's little brother. Yikes.
Oh, I almost forgot. Here's the headline, and Kliff's lead:
‘I wish we had one more year:’ States are struggling to launch Obamacare on timeHARTFORD, Conn. — Facing tight deadlines and daunting workloads, states across the country are scaling back ambitions for implementing the Affordable Care Act.
Well, everybody had three years (2013 - 2010) to implement ObamaCare, "the President's signature domestic initiative," which is going to cover a pitiable 7 million of the 40+ million uninsured in its first year. LBJ, let us remember, rolled out Medicare for the entire over-65 population in one year, back in the day of steam-powered mainframes that used punch cards fed to them by guys in white shirts with ties.
So what's the difference? The system architecture. Medicare for all has a simple and robust single payer architecture: You determine eligibility in one (1) jurisdiction (the United States) with one eligibility criteria for citizens: Their age. ObamaCare, by contrast, needs to determine eligibility in 50 (fifty) jurisdictions, with a complex eligibility formula that's primarily income-based, but involves systems integration from the IRS, DHS, HHS, and private credit reporting companies (at least), to throw people into the right subsidy bucket. That's called a combinatorial explosion, and even the best program and project managers -- which ObamaCare's managers clearly either are not, or have not been given the opportunity to be -- have a hard time dealing with them. Let me know how it all works out....
I should add my usual caveat that a system as large as ObamaCare is going to end up helping some people; the odds are that the lucky or the persistent are going to fight their way through the chaos and end up with a health insurance policy that if they're lucky, will cover them when they need it. (Under RomneyCare, bankruptcy claims due to medical expenses fell from 57% to 52%, which gives you an idea of how lucky they will need to be: Basically, a coin flip.) And no doubt the Obama permanent campaign apparatus (Enroll America; OFA) will do its level best to get the most telegenic of the lucky winners in front of the cameras. So there's that.
NOTE * Which is what happens to you when you trust Obama; see youth unemployment and debt, for example, or black unemployment.
NOTE ** I wonder if his techies warned him, or if they were too Koolaid-addled or afraid to speak up, or if they were even at the table at all. Ya know, I'm waiting for the "Hitler Reacts" video on ObamaCare....
http://www.correntewire.com/obamacare_clusterfuck_how_is_another_year_going_to_fix_the_employer_mandate
ObamaCare Clusterfuck: How is another year going to fix the employer mandate?
Submitted by lambert on Thu, 07/04/2013 - 1:03pm
The Treasury Department is basically claiming that the reporting system they originally created to try to make the poorly designed mandate work is incredibly burdensome.This does beg the question: If you haven’t figured out how to make it work yet, how will another year will help?It is not like the implementation process was rushed. It was one of the longest ones for a piece of legislation ever. The administration had four years to work out the kinks but still haven’t.The employer mandate is different. It is a core part of the basic structure of the law. It was meant to expand coverage by getting more people covered at work and to prevent a possible death spiral on the new exchanges with companies dumping the sickest employees. It is necessary to make the system work as advertised. The administration should have been heavily focused on getting it ready. It should have been a top priority.
But maybe the employer mandate was a top priority, but as they say in the Navy: You can't buff a turd.* From where I sit, kicking the employer mandate can down the road looks like what happens when a project manager sees unacceptable risk and triages functionality; that is, they trade meeting some requirements for the ability to get something -- anything?** -- out the door. The Times concurs:
The delay is viewed [by whom?] as an unspoken acknowledgment by federal officials of the size of the task ahead, according to policy experts and benefits consultants. By putting off the employer requirements, officials are in a position to concentrate on making sure the state exchanges work.“The real focus is now getting the individual exchanges and premium tax credits up and running,” said Timothy S. Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University who closely follows the new law, known as the Affordable Care Act.
Now, to be fair, I have never worked on an IT project anywhere near the scale of ObamaCare. So when the administration triages project requirements, it's not like they shunt the programmers on the employer mandate to new cubes and dump them in with the exchange guys; that kind of thing I've seen, but it's dumb: As the great Frederick Brooks writes in The Mythical Man Month(summary): "Adding manpower to a late software project, makes it later."*** The hundreds (thousands?) of programmers on ObamaCare's many Rube Goldberg-esque moving parts are scattered all over the country and likely the globe. Therefore, we assume -- and can only assume, because ObamaCare is being implemented in great secrecy -- that programmers are not the resource being freed.
So what resource is being freed up by triaging the employer mandate? It's right there in the Times story: "[O]fficials are in a position to concentrate on making sure the state exchanges work.."****
And why would "officials" (I read as program and project managers) feel that they are not in a position to concentrate?
Because they don't know what the Fuck is going on, that's why.
89 days from launch. Pass the popcorn.
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And at this point, I would ask Jon Walker to reflect: Will the public option***** really reduce the complexity? And doesn't the public option, if anything, increase the chances that ObamaCare and the exchanges will serve as a template for, say, Social Security? Why not simply advocate for a proven system, a system that saves both lives and money, that we already know works, and that doesn't face any of the "implementation process" issues that Walker describes? Why not single payer Medicare for All?
NOTE * I'm assuming some level of good faith dealing here; in other words, that the contractors who are building ObamaCare's IT systems aren't treating the project like one of DOD's many self-licking ice cream cones. But I could be wrong. RiverDaughter has had experience with one of the prime contractors, Accenture, and here's her description of what happens after Accenture has billed a victim client for another few hundred mil:
Commence the parties and golf outings! Biggest scam in IT.
And IT has rather a lot of big scams.
NOTE ** That is certainly the political incentive; Obama committed to the date, in public. ("We'll implement it.") So something's going to come out the door. But remember the baseline ObamaCare's program manager set: "Let’s just make sure it’s not a third-world experience."
NOTE *** Because surprise! You've got to bring the new people up to speed, for starters. Best simply to gut it out. Oh, and Brooks also introduces Conway's Law: "Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce systems which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations." So it's not surprising that a system designed to maximize rental extraction by, among other things, obfuscating the true cost of services, ends up building software that maximizes rental extraction by obfuscating the true cost of services (and by the builders themselves, too).
NOTE **** The sourcing of the "unspoken acknowledgement" is interesting; not "officials," even speaking anonymously, but people one degree of separation away from officials: "policy experts and benefits consultants." One might speculate that Obama's vengeful and Orwellian "insider threat" program is especially intense inside a secretive program that is of intense political importance to him. Morale must be most excellent in the cubes! Oh, and note the ambiguity of "state exchanges." Does that mean the exchanges run by states, like Covered California, or the exchanges used by states, like the Federal exchange, or both? Also, note not a word on the Federal data hub, so that's either working great or it's a complete catastrophe nobody's told management about yet.
NOTE ***** Assuming for the sake of the argument that the words "public option" actually mean something.
ObamaCare delay undermines entire White House agenda
POSTED AT 1:01 PM ON JULY 5, 2013 BY ED MORRISSEY
The White House wants to spin the delay in enforcing the employer mandate of ObamaCare as evidence that they’re listening to Americans and the business sector and attempting to be flexible on implementation. Rich Lowry isn’t buying it. In an essay yesterday for Politico, Lowry explains that the delay comes from the incompetence of the White House more than three years after pushing an unworkable bill through Congress, combined with its clear intention to manipulate the law for its own political benefit:
The administration can call it whatever it wants, but there is no hiding the embarrassment of a climbdown on a high-profile feature of President Barack Obama’s signature initiative — although the administration seemed determined to do all it could to hide it. If Bloomberg hadn’t broken the news on Tuesday, the administration was apparently planning to announce it on July 3 — only because the day before Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve were too far off.The reason for the delay, we’re told, is incompetence. The administration’s story is that it simply couldn’t find a way to implement the insurance reporting requirements on employers within the time frame set out in the law. In this telling, the mandate was merely collateral damage — it had to be put off, along with the accompanying $2,000-per-employee fine on firms with more than 50 employees who don’t offer health coverage.This just happens to be the mandate that is causing howls of pain from businesses and creating perverse incentives for them to limit their hiring or to hire part- rather than full-time employees. And it just happens that 2015 — the new target year for implementation — is after a midterm election year rather during one. It must all be a lucky break. …Obamacare was sold on two flagrantly false promises: that you could keep the insurance you have and that prices for insurance would drop. But employers will dump significant numbers of employees onto the exchanges to save on their own health-care costs. And the latest indication of the law’s price shock came via The Wall Street Journal this week, which reported, “healthy consumers could see insurance rates double or even triple when they look for individual coverage.”
That demonstrates the underlying incompetence of the ObamaCare project, from start to finish. It promises something that it not only couldn’t deliver, but made all but impossible from its very existence. On top of that, it created a huge top-down bureaucracy that makes everything more costly for all participants in the system — government, providers, insurers, employers, and consumers. That also increased the likelihood of incompetence, capriciousness, and failure, which is a large part of the reason that the employer mandate had to be delayed … the other part being the approaching 2014 midterm election cycle, of course.
This creates a bigger headache for Obama and his administration than merely the Affordable Care Act rollout, though. They face two big policy debates in the coming months — immigration reform in the House, and the budget and debt ceiling in both chambers of Congress. By declaring the right to arbitrarily ignore statutory law and defy Congress in this matter, just how is Congress supposed to negotiate with the administration on anything else? Allahpundit blogged about the impact on border-security statutes earlier this week, but Conn Carroll and Mickey Kaus point out another component in the comprehensive bill that might be even more vulnerable to Obama administration capriciousness:
Here is the sound bite I would deliver today if anybody wanted a sound bite from me, which they don’t:Obama has unilaterally decided to suspend Obamacare’s mandate for employers after receiving business complaints;Don’t you think he’ll also decide to suspend the Senate Gang of 8′s mandate that employers use “E-Verify” (to screen new employees for legal status) when he receives similar business complaints?That’s especially true since, while some Democrats defend the employer mandate, neither liberals nor libertarians nor Latino groups like E-Verify. And the E-Verify “mandate” in the Gang of 8 bill is worded suspiciously loosely. Obama might not have to break the law to simply declare the mandate satisfied (and allow legalized illegals to go ahead and get their green cards).
What does that say for administration promises to sustain reductions in spending? To work on paying down the national debt? Neither of those get put into statutory law, and if the Obama administration thinks it can ignore statute, then budgetary promises are worth less than nothing at all.
In my column for The Fiscal Times, I recall the hysterics on the Left that decried the supposedly “imperial Presidency” of George W. Bush, and argue that the real thing has arrived:
Waiving one mandate without the other not only offends the rule of law, it completely disrupts the delicate fiscal scheme that Congress created to keep costs in line. Democrats used to complain about the “imperial Presidency” of George W. Bush when he acted completely within his constitutional authority. This demonstration is a much clearer example of an administration that manipulates law for its own political purposes, even laws demanded by President Obama himself.Furthermore, the problem of an imperial Presidency doesn’t end with Obamacare. The White House has pushed the House to consider a comprehensive immigration-reform bill passed by the Senate last week, arguing in part that the bill provides for more border security than ever contemplated by any previous Congresses or administrations. A late amendment even transferred those border-security and visa-reform metrics from regulations to statutory requirements. Given how this White House treated the statutes created by the ACA it championed, why exactly should House Republicans put any trust in this administration to enforce the border-control statutes created by the Senate in its bill?A recent Fox poll shows that distrust of the federal government has jumped nine points since last October, and now ties the peak seen in July 2011. Unlike the administration’s blatant attempt to escape the political consequences of its terrible health-care market reform, those results are neither capricious nor irrational.
The real damage in this move has been done to the big-government project. In order to argue that bigger government works, it has to prove itself competent and accountable. This demonstration shows that it’s neither.
That’s not the only damage, either, as McClatchy reports. This will jack up ObamaCare costs by at least $10 billion, and possibly much more:
Tuesday’s delay will be costly.The Congressional Budget Office estimates the federal government will lose $10 billion in employer penalties in 2015 because of the delayed enforcement. Likewise, many expect that federal outlays to help low- and moderate-income people purchase coverage will grow with employers no longer required to provide coverage next year.“At a minimum, the federal revenue from fines is gone. More realistically, the costs of already bloated insurance subsidies will escalate and the red ink will rise,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a conservative think tank. …“The regulations were quite complicated and it certainly was difficult to calculate the number of full-time employees and how employers were going to be penalized, but I don’t see that as the real reason. I see this as just caving in to a demand from industry,” Feldman said of the move. “I think the computer problems are just a way to explain it. The real reason is you got strong pushback.”The result, Feldman predicted, will be fewer employers offering coverage, more federal funding to help people get coverage through the exchanges, and more people without coverage. “This is counterproductive,” Feldman said.
Big Government — more capricious, more unaccountable, more incompetent, and more costly.
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/07/03/if-obama-can-unilaterally-delay-obamacares-employer-mandate-can-he-delay-new-immigration-provisions-too/
If Obama can unilaterally delay ObamaCare’s employer mandate, why wouldn’t he delay new border security measures too?
POSTED AT 5:11 PM ON JULY 3, 2013 BY ALLAHPUNDIT
An excellent question from Conn Carroll, especially in light of the news from CBO this morning that the Corker/Hoeven “border surge” will supposedly reduce illegal immigrationby one-third to one-half. (The original Gang of Eight bill would have reduced it by just one-quarter.) That conclusion depends on a lot of assumptions, but the core assumption is that Obama will in fact enforce the new law as it’s written. Will he? He now refuses to enforce a key provision of his own signature legislation because it’s politically inconvenient for his party to do so. Come 2016, if Democrats are in trouble and desperate for Latino turnout, why wouldn’t he “delay” some of the Gang of Eight’s border provisions? Don’t forget, he’s taken unilateral action on immigration in the name of winning elections before.
Your call, Democrats. Either Obama rescinds the delay on the ObamaCare mandate in the interest of proving that border hawks can trust him to enforce the Gang of Eight bill, or he sticks with it and the Gang of Eight’s vaunted border-security measures effectively mean nothing, which leaves Republicans with zero reason to vote for the bill.
The exact same playbook is being deployed by liberals, and pro-amnesty Republicans, to pass amnesty. Just like the employer mandate was essential to getting a CBO score that said Obamacare would not add to the debt, E-Verify is now essential for convincing Americans that the Schumer-Rubio bill will, in Sen. Chuck Schumer’s, D-N.Y., words make illegal immigration “a thing of the past.”But, like Obamacare and the employer mandate, once the 11 million illegal immigrants currently in the country get amnesty, E-Verify will have outlived its usefulness. Businesses already complain at the existing voluntary E-Verify system, and those complaints will only get louder as a new E-Verify system becomes mandatory.Does anyone, anywhere, believe Obama would not delay implementation of E-Verify too?Conservatives who do not trust Obama to enforce perfectly good law – whether it is No Child Left Behind, the War Powers Act, our current immigration laws, etc. – should not trust him to enforce whatever security measures are part of any immigration deal. There is no reason to believe that amnesty would not be every bit the train wreck that Obamacare already is.
Two further tidbits about today’s CBO report. One: They estimate that the $38 billion that Corker/Hoeven will cost will reduce the net population of illegals in the U.S. over the next 10 years from 10.4 million under the previous version of the Gang of Eight bill to 9.6 million. That’s a difference of 800,000 illegals, which, per the security pricetag, comes out to $47,500 for each one. Which prompts another good question from Carroll, via Twitter: At that expense, wouldn’t it be cheaper to just pay them to go home? This is what happens, I guess, when you follow the Senate’s plan of throwing money at a political problem rather than focusing on more efficient ways to solve the underlying policy problem. Two: CBO finds that, due to the added security expense, the new version of the Gang of Eight bill will reduce the deficit by $135 billion over 10 years versus $197 billion prior to Corker/Hoeven being added. But that’s myopic: Byron York noted a few days ago that the vaunted savings to entitlement programs like Social Security from adding millions of new taxpayers to the rolls will barely dent our Social Security difficulties long-term. Today’s newly legalized taxpayer is tomorrow’s retired citizen. Run the numbers and you’ll find that, instead of Social Security going bust in 2033 under current projections, a post-amnesty America would get a reprieve until … 2035. And that’s assuming, as noted above, that nothing in the enacted law changes before then either because the president decides unilaterally that he doesn’t want to enforce it or the GOP caves and accelerates benefits for illegals under pressure from Democrats and Latino voters.
By the way, Dave Weigel notes that influential House Judiciary Committee chair Bob Goodlatte is hinting that some form of a DREAM amnesty, which would legalize only illegals who were brought here by their parents when they were young, might be in the offing in lieu of broader comprehensive reform. That’s not a bad play if House Republicans can get some sort of border improvements in exchange. It doesn’t solve our “what if Obama doesn’t enforce it?” issue, but it limits the damage if he doesn’t while earning some goodwill with amnesty supporters. If Harry Reid wants to kill that bill because it doesn’t go far enough for his liking, that’s on him.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-07-02/obamacare-reporting-and-shared-responsibility-payments-delayed-until-2015
Obamacare Employer Mandate, "Shared Responsibility Payments" Delayed Until 2015
How do you know the IRS' government's takeover of the US healthcare system will be a smashing success? It, or rather the mandatory reporting and "employer shared responsibility payments", were just delayed by one year. The sheer and utter chaos and vocal protests behind the scenes for the administration to agree to this unprecedented step (back) are palpable.
Just released by the US Treasury's Blog:
Continuing to Implement the ACA in a Careful, Thoughtful Manner
Over the past several months, the Administration has been engaging in a dialogue with businesses - many of which already provide health coverage for their workers - about the new employer and insurer reporting requirements under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). We have heard concerns about the complexity of the requirements and the need for more time to implement them effectively. We recognize that the vast majority of businesses that will need to do this reporting already provide health insurance to their workers, and we want to make sure it is easy for others to do so. We have listened to your feedback. And we are taking action.
The Administration is announcing that it will provide an additional year before the ACA mandatory employer and insurer reporting requirements begin. This is designed to meet two goals. First, it will allow us to consider ways to simplify the new reporting requirements consistent with the law. Second, it will provide time to adapt health coverage and reporting systems while employers are moving toward making health coverage affordable and accessible for their employees. Within the next week, we will publish formal guidance describing this transition. Just like the Administration’s effort to turn the initial 21-page application for health insurance into a three-page application, we are working hard to adapt and to be flexible about reporting requirements as we implement the law.
Here is some additional detail. The ACA includes information reporting (under section 6055) by insurers, self-insuring employers, and other parties that provide health coverage. It also requires information reporting (under section 6056) by certain employers with respect to the health coverage offered to their full-time employees. We expect to publish proposed rules implementing these provisions this summer, after a dialogue with stakeholders - including those responsible employers that already provide their full-time work force with coverage far exceeding the minimum employer shared responsibility requirements - in an effort to minimize the reporting, consistent with effective implementation of the law.
Once these rules have been issued, the Administration will work with employers, insurers, and other reporting entities to strongly encourage them to voluntarily implement this information reporting in 2014, in preparation for the full application of the provisions in 2015. Real-world testing of reporting systems in 2014 will contribute to a smoother transition to full implementation in 2015.
We recognize that this transition relief will make it impractical to determine which employers owe shared responsibility payments (under section 4980H) for 2014. Accordingly, we are extending this transition relief to the employer shared responsibility payments. These payments will not apply for 2014. Any employer shared responsibility payments will not apply until 2015.
During this 2014 transition period, we strongly encourage employers to maintain or expand health coverage. Also, our actions today do not affect employees’ access to the premium tax credits available under the ACA (nor any other provision of the ACA).?
Mark J. Mazur is the Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy at the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
Breaking: ObamaCare employer mandate to be delayed until 2015
POSTED AT 6:10 PM ON JULY 2, 2013 BY ALLAHPUNDIT
We’re well past the creaking stage of ObamaCare. Now we’re starting to hear cracks.
Democrats got destroyed in one midterm election because of O’s pet boondoggle. The White House will do what it can to stop history from repeating.
The decision will come in regulatory guidance to be issued later this week. It addresses vehement complaints from employer groups about the administrative burden of reporting requirements, though it may also affect coverage provided to some workers.The two officials, who asked not to be identified to discuss the move ahead of its announcement, said the administration decided to wait until 2015 before enforcing the employer mandate in order to simplify reporting requirements and give businesses more time to adapt their health-care coverage.The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act includes financial penalties on businesses with more than 50 employees that fail to provide health insurance that meets minimum standards and tests for affordability.
What happens now, without a law requiring businesses to provide insurance to full-time workers as the cost of coverage — and the cost of complying with other new O-Care regulations — rises? No one knows. We had to pass the bill to see what’s in it, and now we’ll have to implement the bill without an employer mandate to see what it looks like in practice. Presumably a bunch of businesses will simply drop coverage and leave workers to fend for themselves on the new ObamaCare exchanges. Assuming that those are ready by next year.
There have been endless stories over the past year or so of business owners scratching their heads and wringing their hands about coping with the burdens of the mandate. (The most fun example involves the Obama-loving film industry.) Gallup polled businesses just a few weeks ago to see how they were handling it. Results:
“We were startled because we know that employers were concerned about the Affordable Care Act and the effects it would have on their business, but we didn’t realize the extent they were concerned, or that the businesses were being proactive to make sure the effects of the ACA actually were minimized,” said attorney Steven Friedman of Littler Mendelson. His firm, which specializes in employment law, commissioned the Gallup poll…Forty-one percent of the businesses surveyed have frozen hiring because of the health-care law known as Obamacare. And almost one-fifth—19 percent— answered “yes” when asked if they had “reduced the number of employees you have in your business as a specific result of the Affordable Care Act.”
Forty-one percent. That’s terrible under any circumstances but potentially catastrophic next year with the Fed warning that the age of quantitative easing is coming to an end. And an economic catastrophe driven by ObamaCare means another electoral catastrophe for Democrats, no matter how much pandering they do on amnesty and background checks. That’s why the employer mandate is being delayed; more key O-Care pieces, like the exchanges, may yet be delayed too. That’s what failure looks like. So now, instead of Obama’s signature legislation being a drag on Democrats next year, it’ll be a drag on them in 2016 instead. Expect lots of public pronouncements from Hillary Clinton, beginning sooner than you think, about how she admires the president for having tried on universal health care but emphasizing that she would have done things “quite a bit differently.”
Via Timothy Carney, here’s an Examiner vid from April about the joy of mandates.
Update: Via Ben Domenech’s feed, an excellent point:
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