Delay Obamacare

Obamacare, the horribly mis-named Affordable Care Act, is not ready for prime time. Its failures have been showing up in the news for months and months. Even President Barack Obama has admitted it's not ready to function — by his actions though not his words. He has made this admission by unilaterally delaying a whole series of Obamacare provisions, something the language of the law does not allow him to do. Just as examples:

• He has delayed the employer mandate by a year, apparently both because the Health & Human Services (HHS) Department isn't ready to make it work and to delay its impact on jobs until after the 2014 elections.
   
• He has delayed for a year the income verification necessary to confirm eligibility for subsidies. This opens the door to massive fraud, as large as that which has plagued Medicare and Medicaid for so long.
   
• He has delayed for at least a year implementation of even the most basic data security in the insurance exchanges, because HHS can't get the security software written and tested in time. This means everyone who gives information to the exchanges will have an extremely high risk of identity theft. (And that's not counting the fact that many of the "navigators" hired to help people get through the process have not completed their background checks, and some of those whose background checks have been completed were revealed to be convicted felons.)
   
• He has delayed for a year the law's caps on out-of-pocket expenses, so an awful lot of people are going to find their health care a lot more expensive than they expect.

What Obama's really saying is that it's right and appropriate to delay virtually every provision of Obamacare — so long as the Republicans don't suggest it. But what the Republicans are asking is that this vast new entitlement be held to at least the most basis requirements of due diligence, or to be prudently delayed until it can meet even these most basic standards. It's telling that Barack Obama and the Democrats can't even accept that.

Obamacare is not ready to run. It should be delayed until it's at least close.

Nancy Pelosi famously said "We have to pass the bill to find out what's in it." Now we're finding out "what's in it", and only hyperpartisans like it.The senator who helped write the bill says it's a "train wreck". The unions helped get Obamacare passed, then asked for and got waivers so they don't have to live under it, and now want it scrapped because of how much it's going to cost them. Congressmen and senators — and their high-paid staffs — also complain they can't afford Obamacare insurance. If they can't afford it at their salaries, how can they expect ordinary folks like most of the middle class to be able to? Now, to add insult to injury, Obama has decided to pay most of the insurance cost for the Congress and their staffs. My objections include
    1. This is a flagrant violation of equal protection.
    2. These people foisted Obamacare on us, and should be made to live
         under it themselves.
If Obamacare is good enough for us, then it's good enough for our public servants (and the unions). (In fact, that's almost exactly what Congressman Huelskamp said on MSNBC.) Other Obama fundraisers and supporters have also gotten waivers. Even big Obamacare cheerleader AARP has asked for, and received, a waiver. Since the big Obama supporters (and, accidentally, a few others) are getting waivers and won't have to put up with Obama's signature legislation, Obamacare is looking more and more like it's simply a punishment being enacted against those of us who are not sufficiently supportive of our Dear Leader.

Obamacare has already cost us a lot in money and jobs. It has been damaging our economy since the day it was signed. Now it appears Obamacare may actually increase the number of people without health insurance, when the whole rationale for its passage was to give them insurance. And what do we get from Obama's minions?