The Obama administration announced last week that it is delaying a key
portion of the implementation of Obamacare — meaning the financial
penalties to small businesses that fail to comply. The dominant news meme seems
to be that we should not under any circumstances assume there is any problem
with the Affordable Care Act (ACA), that these types of delays were always
expected, that the program is still popular, that we shouldn’t read anything
into its structural soundness, and so on.
Jon Gruber, the MIT economist whose name and reputation
are tied to much of the health care law said: “Basically, it was [the
administration’s] judgment that it was causing too many logistical and
political headaches and it wasn’t essential to the law, so they decided to just
delay it a year and live with the revenue loss.”
Gruber gives the game away, making it clear that part of
the purpose of designing such a complicated system was to ensure fine-revenues
from those firms that could not comply with it.
Gruber’s sentiment was parroted by Judy Solomon of the (pro-Obamacare)
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: “The goal of health care reform is to
provide coverage for all Americans — whether through Medicaid, private plans in
the marketplace or employee coverage. Nothing in yesterday's announcement puts
a roadblock on these pathways.” In other
words: Move on, there’s nothing to see
here.
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