Well well, here we are. Republicans got vilified by the liberal left for taking medicine off the shelves of seniors, cutting benefits and wanting to deny 45 million people healthcare coverage by cancelling Obamacare. And let’s not forget that President Obama would not even negotiate with Republicans on delaying Obamacare during the recent budget talks this past September. In fact, right here you can watch Press Secretary Jay Carney say, “We will not accept anything that delays or defunds Obamacare, Congress needs to pass a budget and not attach politically motivated riders to their funding bills.”
But imagine that, here we are just 2 months later and President Obama himself just suspended the individual mandate for those who have had their previous plans cancelled, or are unable to sign up for a plan because of the disastrous Healthcare.gov website rollout.
But there’s a problem with all this tweaking the president is doing to Obamacare. The Constitution does not give him the authority to unilaterally change laws at his discretion. But then again, we have to have a Congress with some backbone to do anything about it and we’re not sure that’s going to happen any time soon.
Read more below from the Wall Street Journal:
It seems Nancy Pelosi was wrong when she said “we have to pass” ObamaCare to “find out what’s in it.” No one may ever know because the White House keeps treating the Affordable Care Act’s text as a mere suggestion subject to day-to-day revision. Its latest political retrofit is the most brazen: President Obama is partly suspending the individual mandate.
The White House argued at the Supreme Court that the insurance-purchase mandate was not only constitutional but essential to the law’s success, while refusing Republican demands to delay or repeal it. But late on Thursday, with only four days to go before the December enrollment deadline, the Health and Human Services Department decreed that millions of Americans are suddenly exempt.
Individuals whose health plans were canceled will now automatically qualify for a “hardship exemption” from the mandate. If they can’t or don’t sign up for a new plan, they don’t have to pay the tax. They can also get a special category of ObamaCare insurance designed for people under age 30.
So merry Christmas. If ObamaCare’s benefit and income redistribution requirements made your old, cheaper, better health plan illegal, you now have the option of going without coverage without the government taking your money as punishment. You can also claim the tautological consolation of an ObamaCare hardship exemption due to ObamaCare itself.
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