Tom Maguire:
The geniuses at Team Obama have moved back the health insurance enrollment period for 2015 until after the election, presumably to avoid headlines about sticker shock (this assumes healthCare.Fail is up and running, or at least limping, by then.)
But wait! As Marc Thiessen noted a few days back, other deadlines more or less assure a new ObamaCare meltdown next October regardless of this attempt to hide the ball:
But let’s say, by some miracle, Obama’s plan does work, and many in the individual market now losing their plans get to keep them for a year. That just means they will start getting cancellation letters 90 days before the end of the year. In October 2014. One month before the midterm elections.
That is a political disaster for the Democrats.
Per this recent Congressional Research Service report on cancellations that 90 day requirement is the law:
Issuers may also uniformly terminate coverage for a group of individuals, if it is done without regard to health factors. To do so, issuers must:
•provide 90 days’ prior notice to individuals that the coverage is being discontinued.
So Team Obama has “solved” the sticker shock problem but left themselves a new one.
If Obama feels that these 90 day notices will also hurt dems in the 2014 election he can do what he did in 2012 when he asked companies to risk lawsuits by holding onto pink slips until after that election.
Remember?
He couldn’t promise to not enforce the rule-breaking contractors who wanted to help him get re-elected if he wanted to.
No wonder Obama wants to ”pack that court.”