The Patriot Post® · ObamaCare Detours Won't Save Democrats

“We have implemented a number of changes in the way [ObamaCare] was written to ease the transition into the marketplace” for consumers, insurers and employers. That was Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s candid testimony to Congress Wednesday. Indeed, there has been a long line of politically motivated changes to the law – changes that are being made unilaterally and without the legislative oversight of Congress as clearly outlined in Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution. And the Obama administration is proud of it.

At least most of the time. As we noted Wednesday, HHS quietly delayed the individual mandate for millions of Americans – a change buried in a technical bulletin not even related to the mandate. Ironically, the law caused millions of insurance plans to be cancelled, which now qualifies those people for a “hardship” exemption from the law. All that’s necessary is filling out a form attesting 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.”

In another rewrite of existing law, Barack Obama has declared that the sequester no longer applies to ObamaCare’s subsidies for low-income Americans. According to the White House, the cuts would have taken 7% from those subsidies, but not any more – the administration restored “full funding” for 2015. National Journal reports, “The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which noticed the change, said the reversal would likely restore about $560 million to the subsidies – and require $560 million in cuts to other programs to make up for it.” All told, the subsidies will cost $8 billion this year and $156 billion over 10 years.

Back to Sebelius’s testimony, Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) asked her, “How many of those [4.2 million people] that have … enrolled in ObamaCare have paid their premium?” Sebelius responded, “I can’t tell you that, sir, because I don’t know that.” Industry estimates are that 15%-20% of enrollees haven’t paid yet. The White House also isn’t bothering to track how many uninsured people are enrolling. Isn’t enrollment pretty much the point of ObamaCare? At least that’s what Democrats told us.

Another supposed benefit of ObamaCare, as Obama repeatedly told us, was that it was going to save the average family $2,500 a year on health insurance premiums. So how’s that working out? “I think premiums are likely to go up [in 2015], but at a smaller pace than what we’ve seen since 2010,” Sebelius projected. One more “Affordable” Care Act promise broken.

These are just the latest in a long string of horrible headline stories about ObamaCare, so it’s no wonder that Democrats are running scared with an election looming. That’s especially true in light of this week’s loss of a very winnable House election in Florida, where little known Republican David Jolly beat a better known and far better funded Democrat, Alex Sink. Jolly made a point to run against ObamaCare – even calling for repeal – while Sink deployed DNC Chief Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s “mend it, don’t end it” tripe. Some Democrats are so desperate to keep their seats that they might just run against the law – even if in some cases they voted for it.

Then again, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) says, “I’m very proud of our House Democrats and how they have not only embraced the Affordable Care Act, as they helped create it, but how proud they are of it. Republicans are wasting their time using that as their electoral issue, and they will find that out.” Keep up that plan, Nancy.

As we argued early on, it was actually a brilliant strategy for Democrats to delay the implementation of their health care takeover until after the 2012 election. If the disastrous rollout and subsequent barrage of bad news and lawless rewrites had taken place in 2011 and 2012, we’d now be writing about President Mitt Romney.