#Obamacare is holding a gun to the collective head of 93 million insurance policies.

This is… bad.

Background: Jay Carney, speaking as  White House Press Secretary (notice how all of the administration’s official Obamacare cheerleaders are loyal partisans, instead of respected policy wonks?) tried to argue that Obama’s “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan” lie would only turn around to bite people people in the individual insurance market.  Not so fast, says Avik Roy:

Contrary to the reporting of NBC, the administration’s commentary in the Federal Register did not only refer to the individual market, but also the market for employer-sponsored health insurance.

[snip]

“The Departments’ mid-range estimate is that 66 percent of small employer plans and 45 percent of large employer plans will relinquish their grandfather status by the end of 2013,” wrote the administration on page 34552. All in all, more than half of employer-sponsored plans will lose their “grandfather status” and get canceled. According to the Congressional Budget Office, 156 million Americans—more than half the population—was covered by employer-sponsored insurance in 2013.

[snip]

How many people are exposed to these problems? 60 percent of Americans have private-sector health insurance—precisely the number that Jay Carney dismissed. As to the number of people facing cancellations, 51 percent of the employer-based market plus 53.5 percent of the non-group market (the middle of the administration’s range) amounts to 93 million Americans.

The reason that you haven’t heard about this?  Barack Obama unilaterally – I have yet to hear a compelling legal justification for him being about to do this without Congressional approval, largely because there isn’t one – decided to delay the employer mandate for one year.  Unless the President is planning to just keep delaying the employer mandate, those plans will be subject to Obamacare’s rules and restrictions in 2015.  So, basically, imagine the situation we’re in now, only about five times as huge, and coming to a head just before the 2014 midterms.

[pause]

Some people would argue that all of this represents the administration’s Machiavellian plan to institute single-payer health care.  To which I say: if that is true then the Obama administration cannot schedule worth a darn; telling tens of millions of people Hey, we lied about your health care.  Enjoy that 100% hike in premiums! just before a midterm election is not exactly an optimal political strategy.  Which is a polite way of saying There’s dumb, and then there’s special dumb.

So, no, I don’t believe that it’s a plot; it’s just Barack Obama assuming, yet again, that there are Magical Pretty Policy Space Princess Unicorns out there whose sole job it is is to turn whatever blather comes out of Barack Obama’s mouth into a working government program.  Mind you, I wish that there were, given that I live here and everything…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

Via Twitchy.

15 thoughts on “#Obamacare is holding a gun to the collective head of 93 million insurance policies.”

  1. For the life of me, I don’t know why Congressional Republicans have not sued the Executive Branch over these waivers and delays. Will the next Republican president be able to unilaterally waive or delay whatever legislation he or she finds inconvenient? Can a President provide waivers for the capital gains tax or delay authorized spending to save a buck in the less popular cabinet departments (Education, Energy, etc)? What kind of uproar would that cause on Talking Points Memo? Really it’s just a further degradation of the rule of law.

    1. Part of it is a political problem. We don’t want to be seen forcing pain on regular people (and we don’t want to force pain on regular people anyways – pointed out for any lurkers). The pain forcing is all Obama’s/Democrats’.

    2. Ah, Checks and Balances. What could the courts do if the President blew them off? We’ve seen it happen before, with other Democrat, Andrew Jackson of Trait of Tears fame. No, the Problem is Congress has the power to stand up to the President, if united (dang). All the more reason to knock off all the idiot “RINO” talk, because right now, nothing is more important then removing Harry Reid from his position as Senate Majority Leader…….

  2. I will only concede to my liberal brothers and sisters that we keep going back and forth on the “Thick As A Brick/Socialist Chessmaster” theory. Thoughts Moe?

      1. I’m reminded of WFB’s comment to the effect of that he would rather be ruled by the first 2000 names in the Cambridge phone book than by the Harvard faculty.

    1. I think it’s just something we *do*, Gator.
      .
      Note that we keep having the same debate re. Roberts.
      .
      Mew

    1. In 1152, King Stephen of England launched an attack on Newbury Castle which was garrisoned by John FitzGilbert. Stephen held FitzGilbert’s son, William as a hostage. Stephen threatened to kill John’s son were he not to surrender the castle even going to the trouble of loading the kid into a trebuchet. Now ole Fitz wasn’t exactly the sentimental type and his response cracks me up everytime I think about it. “I still have the hammer and the anvil with which to forge still more and better sons!” Needless to say the King didn’t get the castle. Point here being, hostage taking is only affective if someone cares about the hostage. Oh the kid did survive, Stephen’s bark was a little more than his bite. Kid grew up to be William, Lord Marshall a tough SOB in his own right who spent a half century kicking the shit out of anyone who become a nuisance to the King of England (whomever that King might be).

  3. Hey now. We know Obamacare was intended as a trojan horse for single payer. We have way too many Democrats bragging about this to believe otherwise.
    .
    That’s not an argument in favor of their competence, mind. Bragging about their “secret plot” actively argues against competence.
    .
    That said, there’s a darker possibility than mere incompetence.
    The committed Left has a fetish about revolutions, and a deep faith in the Marxist doctrine of historical inevitability. See also: Cloward-Piven. It’s an underpants gnome theory.
    1) provoke a destabilizing crisis
    2) revolution
    3) utopia inevitably results
    It’s nonsense on stilts, but a chunk of the political Left believes it with religious fervor. Do Obama, Pelosi, and Reid share that belief? I don’t know. They’ve certainly given me nothing with which to discount the possibility. (And if they’re rank opportunists, they could see personal gain from going along, and taking advantage of the true believers.)
    .
    So, Machiavellian? Definitely not. Nihilistic? Quite possibly.

  4. I shall now save the phrase “Magical Pretty Policy Space Princess Unicorns” for my future use.

  5. Does this mean you see merit in my ‘this is what comes of involving drug addled loonies in politics’ argument?

  6. I tend to agree with Luke Jimmie Bisse over at Sundries Shack made a point some time back about how Dems kick the pillars out that support the roof and expect the roof to hover in the air until the next poor schmuck -generally a Repub – comes along and the roof comes crashing down on His head. But O’bama’s overweening ego had to have a second term and now he gets to be the schmuck. The left has never considered that the possibility that when the Revolution comes, They may be the ones in power, and when you’re the ones in power it’s going to be kind of hard to guide the revolution to the goal you want. So if a destabilizing crisis was what they wanted they have that, but they would be the target in any Revolution. It does explain all that missing ammo tho, so there’s that. Next year when all the corporate cancelations start hitting the fan things should get Real interesting.

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