“Stunned” GOP Launches Probe into Obamacare Delay While Obama Continues to Grease the Skids (+video)
Photo Credit: Fox NewsRepublicans launch probe into ObamaCare mandate delay
By Fox News. House Republicans are investigating the Obama administration’s move to delay a key part of the health care overhaul, claiming the announcement was “completely at odds” with prior claims that ObamaCare was running on schedule and questioning what provisions might be delayed next.
“It’s clear we have no idea the full scope of delays and disarray that may be coming. The American public deserves answers,” Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said in a statement.
Republicans on Upton’s committee fired off a pair of letters on Wednesday to both the Treasury Department and Department of Health and Human Services. They demanded records detailing deliberations regarding the recently announced delay and ongoing talks about other “elements” of the law that some groups want “changed, delayed or repealed.” Read more from this story HERE.
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Republicans “Stunned” Over Delay, Trying to Figure Out What to Do
By Byron York. The move stunned Republicans in Congress, who immediately asked: Whose feedback? What businesses were meeting with the White House? What deals did they make?
“These communications and the decision-making process related to the delay… have not been disclosed publicly,” wrote House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Rep. Fred Upton in a letter to the Treasury Department and the Department of Health and Human Services. Along with 13 other Republican committee members, Upton demanded the administration reveal which businesses and which government officials were involved in the decision.
But the bigger question for Republicans is how to handle the administration’s surprise retreat. Should they focus on secretiveness, as Upton & Co. are doing? Should they push the White House to explain how Obamacare can still work when large employers don’t have to pay fines for not covering workers and, perhaps more importantly, don’t have to report their employees’ health care information to the giant new Obamacare bureaucracy, so the bureaucracy can determine whether those employees are eligible to buy coverage on the exchanges? Or should Republicans just keep pressing for repeal of the whole thing?
“I think we’ll almost certainly be sticking to a full repeal message all the way,” says one GOP Senate aide. “The question here is for the administration – not us – and it’s basically this: At what point will they realize that this law is unworkable?”
Probably never. When key Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett wrote, after the delay announcement, that, “We are full steam ahead for the marketplaces opening on Oct. 1,” she was reflecting the administration’s determination to get the health care exchanges up and running no matter what. Delay the employer mandate? OK. Waive this or that rule? Fine. Just make sure the exchanges get going. Read more from this story HERE.
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Photo Credit: M.Scott MahaskeyWhite House greases squeaky wheels on Obamacare
By David Nather. The delay of Obamacare’s employer coverage rules is giving the critics plenty of new ammunition — but that doesn’t mean the sudden movement is out of character for the administration at all.
It’s just the latest example of a pattern with the implementation of Obamacare: The Obama administration almost always listens to the squeaky wheel.
First more than 1,200 employers and health plans got waivers from early coverage rules. Next, many states that couldn’t decide whether to build a health insurance exchange or let the feds do it for them were given repeated extensions. And then, when Republican governors were holding out on expanding Medicaid, they were finally told there’s no deadline at all.
So when the Obama administration announced Tuesday that it would delay the Affordable Care Act’s insurance mandate for employers for a year, it was just one more piece of evidence that the administration is perfectly willing to bend the rules for some powerful interests — a a welcome invitation for other players to raise their hands in the coming months as the law heads into overdrive.
Already, other groups are grumbling at the decision. Read more from this story HERE.
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Photo Credit: Washington Examiner Liberals blame GOP, Fox, Drudge in Obamacare fiasco
By Paul Bedard. The pro-Obama media watchdog Media Matters Wednesday, defending the administration’s surprise move to cancel implementation of major elements of Obamacare, said that Republicans were to blame and accused conservative media leaders like Fox News and the Drudge Report for ignoring the GOP’s role.
In a release, the liberal group said that Fox and Drudge instead charged that the one-year delay was political with the goal of pushing off the expected initial implementation disaster until after the 2014 elections.
“Fox News and the Drudge Report are ignoring years of Republicans obstructing the implementation of health care reform to accuse the Obama administration of delaying the law for political gain, in the process dismissing the fact that businesses are praising the administration’s move,” said Media Matters. Read more from this story HERE.
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Realities Force President to Scale Back Vision for Obamacare
By Todd Beamon. Six years ago, presidential candidate Barack Obama stood before Iowa voters and introduced a plan designed to extend healthcare to all Americans.
“We can do this,” he said with confidence. “The time has come for universal, affordable healthcare in America.”
Three years ago, President Obama signed into law a plan designed to extend coverage to more than 30 million uninsured people.
“This is what change looks like,” he exulted.
But it has become clear that Obama’s vision for universal health care is dramatically different than it was that day in Iowa. The president been forced to cut, reshape and compromise on his signature Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act because of economic — and political — realities. Read more from this story HERE.
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Photo Credit: APWall Street Journal Apologizes for Not Fighting Hard Enough Against Obamacare
By Wall Street Journal. These columns fought the Affordable Care Act from start to passage, and we’d now like to apologize to our readers. It turns out we weren’t nearly critical enough. The law’s implementation is turning into a fiasco for the ages, and this week’s version is the lawless White House decision to delay the law’s insurance mandate for businesses, though not for individuals.
The employer mandate is central to ObamaCare’s claim of providing universal coverage. Companies with 50 or more “employee equivalents” must pay a $2,000 penalty per full-time employee if they don’t provide government-approved health insurance. The provision was supposed to start in January, and delaying it is like Ford saying its electric car is ready to go, except the electric battery doesn’t work.
But all of a sudden on Tuesday evening Mark Mazur—you know him as the deputy assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy—published a blog post canceling the insurance reporting rules and tax enforcement until 2015 as Washington began to evacuate for the long Independence Day weekend. Enjoy the holiday, mate.
White House fixer Valerie Jarrett tried to contain the fallout with a separate blog post promising that ObamaCare is otherwise “staying the course.” That’s true only if she’s referring to the carelessness and improvisation that have defined the law so far. Read more from this story HERE.
