In the ongoing battle over the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare has been the supporters of the law declaring any attempt to defund or delay it as ridiculous because it is “the law of the land.”
Senator Majority Leader in in rare form with his sophistry declared any attempt to change Obamacare as “anarchy” and said:
“The simple fact remains: Obamacare is the law of the land and will remain the law of the land as long as Barack Obama is President of the United States and as long as I’m Senate majority leader.”
Of course, the media playing their self appointed lapdogs for the Obama administration have happily parroted this line without so much as a return question to the President and his supporters:
“What about the parts of the law the President has changed or delayed?”
The Obama administration has decided to make changes to what is “the law of the land”, unilaterally and without any permission from Congress. Specifically:
1. The employer mandate – “The so-called employer mandate, which penalizes employers with more than 50 employees if they fail to provide a minimum standard of affordable health insurance, was set to kick in 2014, but now will take effect in 2015…”
2. Exchange eligibility verification – On Friday, Sarah Kliff and Sandhya Somashekhar of the Washington Post discovered that the Obama administration had buried in the Federal Register the announcement that the government won’t be able to verify whether or not applicants for Obamacare’s insurance exchange subsidies are actually qualified for the aid, in the 16 states that are setting up their own exchanges. Instead, until at least 2015, these states will be able to “accept the applicant’s attestation [regarding eligibility] without further verification.”
3. Out of pocket caps – Now comes word that another costly provision of the health law—its caps on out-of-pocket insurance costs—will be delayed for one more year.
4. Medicare cuts – Astute observers, both right and left, long-ago noticed the emergence of this politically-motivated postponement of Obamacare’s cuts to Medicare Advantage.
In addition to that, if you go back to 2011, Tom Coburn had noted at the time, 33 deadlines the Obama administration had missed up until that point.
For something that is supposedly “the law of the land”, the administration seems to take an awful lot of liberties with which parts they want to enforce.
As such, their caterwauling about the House passing a continuing resolution that also delays implementation of the individual mandate by a year, ring awfully hollow.
At some point, somebody in the media will get off their rear ends and start questioning Harry Reid and Obama officials about this complete lack of consistency on their part. I’m looking forward to somebody asking, “Why did you allow big business a break for a year but individuals the same break? Why shut down the government over a one year delay?”
I won’t hold my breath, but one can hope.