Not a single Obamacare horror story is true.

[DinoDoc]

who?

The Democratic party.

[Sava]

I'm just relying on the collective wisdom of pop news. ACA is old news. Hell, we haven't even been arguing about it for a while. I only started this thread because I'm sick of the gorram Russians.

[DinoDoc]

Well we just had a Democratic candidate run against repealing Obamacare in a friendly district against a flawed candidate and the Dem candidate also had a money advantage, she lost.

[Sava]

big deal

i just saw my neighbor try to push a snow mound with her car

both cases have about the same relevance to 2014

[100% Wolf]

big deal

i just saw my neighbor try to push a snow mound with her car

both cases have about the same relevance to 2014

Dinodoc doesn't care. As long as it looks good for Republicans it's relevant. Maybe he should check a horoscope.

[Ben Kenobi]

Yeah, the fact that the entire bill has been scrapped amounts to a victory for Cruz, et al.

Individual mandate is being delayed yet another 2 years. Talk about an admission of defeat.

[Kidlicious]

Poor Republicans. They were counting on massive failures. Aside from the website getting too much traffic (because Obamacare is so horrible, everyone wants it), the rollout has been smooth... much smoother than examples of the private industry doing something similar.

The only people who are going to vote in 2014 with anti-Obamacare feelings are frothing Republicans who hate Obama anyways.

Even when Republicans find a lady who supposedly lost her health care, it turns out her new plan is better. When confronted with this reality, she just said "I don't believe it".

And that's the real thing. The true idiots are going to be idiots no matter what.

GOP... RIP

Are you smoking crack
?

[rah]

While it's not the overriding factor a lot of repub think it's going to be, to totally ignore it on the dems part is risky. It will have some impact. Just not as much as most would like

[Sava]

In 8 months time, another few million will be signed up. ACA is going to be a net positive for Dems in 2014.

[DinoDoc]

In 8 months time, another few million will be signed up.

The deadline for enrollment is March 31 of this year. The Admin thus far is short of the goals it set for itself.

[Sava]

The deadline for enrollment is March 31 of this year. The Admin thus far is short of the goals it set for itself.

OH NO

ARBITRARY STANDARD HASN"T BEEN MET


(((((

[Sava]

As a Republican, do you ever get upset at their inability to offer sane opposition?

It's the boy who cried "Death Panel" with you people. Nobody except conservatives (the crazy ones) buys the outcry.

[Patroklos]

If it is working so well why do they keep delaying it?

[Sava]

If it is working so well why do they keep delaying it?

Who is "they"?

You think people are going to care about delays in 8 months? Is that going to be the horse you ride in on?

Obama is a mom-jeans wearing pussy-tyrant hell bent on America's enslavement, destruction, and conversion to Islam by force... WHO MADE US WAIT FOR THE THING WE HATE SO MUCH BUT WANT

You've shot your load already. The rest of us have all tuned you out.

[DinoDoc]

If it is working so well why do they keep delaying it?

Indeed.

ObamaCare's Secret Mandate Exemption
HHS quietly repeals the individual purchase rule for two more years.

ObamaCare's implementers continue to roam the battlefield and shoot their own wounded, and the latest casualty is the core of the Affordable Care Act—the individual mandate. To wit, last week the Administration quietly excused millions of people from the requirement to purchase health insurance or else pay a tax penalty.

This latest political reconstruction has received zero media notice, and the Health and Human Services Department didn't think the details were worth discussing in a conference call, press materials or fact sheet. Instead, the mandate suspension was buried in an unrelated rule that was meant to preserve some health plans that don't comply with ObamaCare benefit and redistribution mandates. Our sources only noticed the change this week.

That seven-page technical bulletin includes a paragraph and footnote that casually mention that a rule in a separate December 2013 bulletin would be extended for two more years, until 2016. Lo and behold, it turns out this second rule, which was supposed to last for only a year, allows Americans whose coverage was cancelled to opt out of the mandate altogether.

In 2013, HHS decided that ObamaCare's wave of policy terminations qualified as a "hardship" that entitled people to a special type of coverage designed for people under age 30 or a mandate exemption. HHS originally defined and reserved hardship exemptions for the truly down and out such as battered women, the evicted and bankrupts.

But amid the post-rollout political backlash, last week the agency created a new category: Now all you need to do is fill out a form attesting that your plan was cancelled and that you "believe that the plan options available in the [ObamaCare] Marketplace in your area are more expensive than your cancelled health insurance policy" or "you consider other available policies unaffordable."

This lax standard—no formula or hard test beyond a person's belief—at least ostensibly requires proof such as an insurer termination notice. But people can also qualify for hardships for the unspecified nonreason that "you experienced another hardship in obtaining health insurance," which only requires "documentation if possible." And yet another waiver is available to those who say they are merely unable to afford coverage, regardless of their prior insurance. In a word, these shifting legal benchmarks offer an exemption to everyone who conceivably wants one.

Keep in mind that the White House argued at the Supreme Court that the individual mandate to buy insurance was indispensable to the law's success, and President Obama continues to say he'd veto the bipartisan bills that would delay or repeal it. So why are ObamaCare liberals silently gutting their own creation now?

The answers are the implementation fiasco and politics. HHS revealed Tuesday that only 940,000 people signed up for an ObamaCare plan in February, bringing the total to about 4.2 million, well below the original 5.7 million projection. The predicted "surge" of young beneficiaries isn't materializing even as the end-of-March deadline approaches, and enrollment decelerated in February.

Meanwhile, a McKinsey & Company survey reports that a mere 27% of people joining the exchanges were previously uninsured through February. The survey also found that about half of people who shopped for a plan but did not enroll said premiums were too expensive, even though 80% of this group qualify for subsidies. Some substantial share of the people ObamaCare is supposed to help say it is a bad financial value. You might even call it a hardship.

HHS is also trying to pre-empt the inevitable political blowback from the nasty 2015 tax surprise of fining the uninsured for being uninsured, which could help reopen ObamaCare if voters elect a Republican Senate this November. Keeping its mandate waiver secret for now is an attempt get past November and in the meantime sign up as many people as possible for government-subsidized health care. Our sources in the insurance industry are worried the regulatory loophole sets a mandate non-enforcement precedent, and they're probably right. The longer it is not enforced, the less likely any President will enforce it.

The larger point is that there have been so many unilateral executive waivers and delays that ObamaCare must be unrecognizable to its drafters, to the extent they ever knew what the law contained.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/...33312607325596