Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Obamacare Glitch Could Leave Out Thousands Of Kids

by JASmius

No amount of self-righteous posturing and dubious, self-defeating last stands can even slow down ObamaCare at this point.  The only thing that will truly turn the American people against it and make actual repeal politically possible  - not likely, but possible - is for it to take effect.  Which is why the Regime keeps delaying more and more of it.

Here's another case in point:

Hundreds of thousands of children could be left without health insurance due to an oversight in the Affordable Care Act.

Obamacare caps the cost of affordable coverage at no more than 9.5 percent of family income. Individuals with employer-provided coverage and their families cannot get subsidized coverage through state health exchanges, USA Today reports.

But due to an oversight, the section of the healthcare law dealing with employer-mandated coverage only applies to the employee. If a company chooses not to offer family benefits, millions of children and families would be forced into the exchanges but would be ineligible for subsidies.

By one estimate, 500,000 children could be affected, USA Today reports.

The alternative, which is to purchase a plan privately, might be a financial impossibility since it costs an average of $15,700 per year, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation estimate.

"We saw this 2½ years ago and thought, 'Has anyone else noticed this?'" Kosali Simon, a professor of public affairs at Indiana University who specializes in health economics, told USA Today. "Everyone said, 'No, no. You must be wrong.' But we weren't, and that's going to leave a lot of people out."
This is just one of the PR time bombs waiting to blow up in The One's face.  Jim Geraghty highlights three more today.

Of course, we have to remember that the White House doesn't look at these as bugs, but as features designed to panic Da Peepul into stampeding towards Single Payer.  That will be the moment of truth for Republicans, when they will need to be ready with a united front behind full repeal and replacement of OCare with genuine, market-based health care reform that most Americans will be ready, willing, and able to full-throatedly get behind.  It will be a moment that will never come again.

It'd be a criminally negligent shame if the Tea Party-instigated GOP civil war was raging so loudly that no Pachyderm noticed.

No comments: