Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Wack-A-Mole

Obamacare is such a disaster that, if it weren't so serious, I'd have to laugh at the stupidity of anyone who ever had a positive thing to say about it.  It has so many problems--all Democrat-made, I point out, since not a single Republican in either house of Congress voted for it--that solving them is like playing Wack-a-mole.  You try to fix (wack) one, another one pops right up somewhere else.

It's enough to drive even a good liberal crazy:
It's getting difficult and slinking toward impossible to defend the Affordable Care Act. The latest blow to Democratic candidates, liberal activists, and naïve columnists like me came Monday from the White House, which announced yet another delay in the Obamacare implementation.

For the second time in a year, certain businesses were given more time before being forced to offer health insurance to most of their full-time workers. Employers with 50 to 99 workers were given until 2016 to comply, two years longer than required by law. During a yearlong grace period, larger companies will be required to insure fewer employees than spelled out in the law.

Not coincidentally, the delays punt implementation beyond congressional elections in November, which raises the first problem with defending Obamacare: The White House has politicized its signature policy.

The win-at-all-cost mentality helped create a culture in which a partisan-line vote was deemed sufficient for passing transcendent legislation. It spurred advisers to develop a dishonest talking point—"If you like your health plan, you'll be able to keep your health plan." And political expediency led Obama to repeat the line, over and over and over again, when he knew, or should have known, it was false.

Defending the ACA became painfully harder when online insurance markets were launched from a multi-million-dollar website that didn't work, when autopsies on the administration's actions revealed an epidemic of incompetence that began in the Oval Office and ended with no accountability.
Then officials started fudging numbers and massaging facts to promote implementation, nothing illegal or even extraordinary for this era of spin. But they did more damage to the credibility of ACA advocates.

Finally, there are the ACA rule changes—at least a dozen major adjustments, without congressional approval.
Instapundit posted this picture today:
Sums it up pretty well so far.

1 comment:

maxutils said...

I agree, of course, but you missed the worst part: in delaying the employer mandate for firms between 50-99 workers, the IRS is now requiring anyone who drops from 100 employees into that range will be required to declare, under penalty of perjury, that that change was due to "bona fide business reasons." Personally, I think that being able to not provide expensive health care is ALWAYS a bona fide business reason, but that may just be me.