“Recent polling conducted by McLaughlin & Associates for the 2017 Project asked Americans, “If you could undo one thing that President Obama has done as president, what would it be?” The choices that the poll provided were “overregulation of the economy,” “high deficit spending,” “tax increases,” “the economic stimulus package,” and “Obamacare.” And the winner, by a wide margin, was Obamacare.”
“An Oregon state board unanimously agreed to a plan Friday to use the federal government’s technology to run the state’s health insurance exchange.”
“The Obamacare website may work for people buying insurance, but beneath the surface, HealthCare.gov is still missing massive, critical pieces — and the deadline for finishing them keeps slipping.”
“Obamacare’s defenders are doing their best to sustain a triumphant mood these days. In the wake of the late-March surge in exchange enrollment, many proponents of the law have insisted it can no longer be rolled back. As the president put it in his April 1 Mission Accomplished speech announcing the enrollment figures, “The Affordable Care Act is here to stay.”
But just as conservative assertions that the law would collapse of its own weight were premature, so too are today’s liberal proclamations that the debate is over.”
“A new survey demonstrates the Affordable Care Act’s negative impact on employment. According to the Journal, ‘nearly half of small-business owners with at least five employees, or 45% of those polled, said they had had to curb their hiring plans because of the health law, and almost a third—29%—said they had been forced to make staff cuts, according to a U.S. Bancorp survey of 3,173 owners with less than $10 million in annual revenue that will be released Thursday.'”
“It is becoming increasingly hard to tell whether Obamacare is the law of the land, or just the law of the parts of the land that don’t reside in (or aren’t in the good graces of) the executive branch. One wonders: Is it really too much to expect an administration that championed the passage of a 2,700-page overhaul of American medicine to live by the same law it was so eager to impose on others?”
“A few observations from my travels and conversations in the marketplace”
“A bill barring the state’s health insurance exchange from hiring individuals convicted of certain felonies failed to advance Tuesday.
Under the proposal by Assemblywoman Connie Conway (R-Tulare), Covered California would not be able to hire people who have been convicted of certain crimes–felonies concerning breach of trust or dishonesty–for jobs where enrollees’ financial or medical data could be accessed.”
“Since Obamacare “hit” its “enrollment” “target,” Democrats, liberals, and their friends in the press have enjoyed some old-fashioned taunting of Republicans. This would be justifiable if a.) Republicans had destroyed the website that needed fixing or b.) predicted that nobody would sign up for the program in the first place.
Neither condition holds, of course. The website was totally the design of CMS, HHS, and the White House, which are all run by Democrats. Meanwhile, as Michael Cannon argued, it is no big feat to get people to sign up for a heavily subsidized product.”
“Many key provisions of The Affordable Care Act were finally implemented earlier this year, and widespread dismay over the reality of an overreaching government immediately followed. Initially, the predominant focus was on the inept rollout of the Obama administration’s website, a fiasco that cost well over $500 million of American taxpayer money — more than was spent to develop Facebook and Twitter combined, more than the cost of developing Apple’s iPhone. With more than two dozen executive branch decisions to delay some of the law’s deadlines — but ignoring fixes more substantive than repairing the basic functions of its website — the Obama administration cynically pushed forward.”