Tuesday, June 24, 2014

The Mandate Is Coming; The Mandate Is Coming

In January.  And this time, presumably, there will be no extension, which has been the administration’s preferred tool in dealing with the more onerous provisions of the Affordable Care Act.  There have been some 21 such extensions and perhaps the White House will again come up with a way. But for now, as Andhya Somashekhar of the Washington Post reports:
In recent weeks, criticism of the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate — one of the law’s most controversial components — has intensified, as employers ... complain publicly and even some Obama administration allies acknowledge that the mandate has harmed some workers.

And, then, there is the bigger picture. Sharyl Attkisson, late of CBS and now with The Daily Signal, does a thorough takedown of the Affordable Care Act and those elusive enrollment numbers.  Among her many conclusions:
Assuming the most positive estimates—that 85 percent of the 8 million enrollees have paid their premiums and 43 percent had coverage before—the newly insured would number only about 3.9 million. By this time, CBO had projected 19 million would have been removed from the ranks of the uninsured, and CMS predicted 26 million.

The whole point, of course, was to insure the uninsured.
So here is a suggestion. Why not turn implementation of the Affordable Care Act over to the Veterans Affairs.  All the top people there are certified as doing outstanding work.  They do management, Washington style, in that outfit.
In a few months all the problems with the ACA will just … go away.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/mandate-coming-mandate-coming_795681.html

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