Sebelius vs. Accuracy
March 12 | Posted by mrossol | ObamaCareIf you can’t explain it to a 6th grader, perhaps you’re hiding something?
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There have been dozens of ObamaCare delays or major revisions via administrative fiat, including four so far this year, but there’s one in particular that the Health and Human Services Department prefers to keep hidden: the individual mandate waivers that we exposed Wednesday.
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius also happened to testify Wednesday in front of the HouseWays and Means Committee, and Tennessee Republican Diane Black asked about “ObamaCare’s Secret Mandate Exemption” (March 12). Ms. Sebelius said she hadn’t read the editorial but did call Ms. Black’s gloss “not accurate”—before going on to confirm that it was, in fact, accurate.
“The hardship exemption was part of the law from the outset,” the Secretary said. “There was a specific rationale there, and it starts with the notion that if you can’t afford coverage you are not obligated to buy coverage.” That’s true: But in December last year HHS ruled that ObamaCare itself was a hardship; people whose coverage was cancelled and believe the new plans are unaffordable were thus relieved of the requirement to buy insurance or else pay a penalty for the law’s first year. Our scoop was that HHS last week quietly extended this dispensation until 2016.
“The new piece is not the hardship exemption, which has always been part of the law,” Ms. Sebelius continued. “It”—the new piece—”allowed people who could not find an affordable option to also have the option of purchasing a catastrophic policy.” That’s also true: HHS did expand eligibility for this special category of coverage otherwise designed for people under 30 to those who declare a hardship, regardless of age, in response to a plea from Virginia Senator Mark Warner and five other endangered Democratic colleagues.
The detail Ms. Sebelius is leaving out is that the exemption isn’t simply a coupon for a catastrophic policy but also a get-out-of-jail-free card from the mandate. That’s the definition of the hardship exemption—you are not obligated to buy coverage or pay the fine. As HHS puts it on the Healthcare.gov consumer website, “Under certain circumstances, you won’t have to make the individual responsibility payment. This is called an ‘exemption.'”
Or as Ms. Sebelius herself put in her letter to Mr. Warner & co., “I agree with you that these consumers should qualify for this hardship exemption, and I can assure you that the exemption will be available to them.”
When HHS isn’t obfuscating, it is telling insurers that the cancellation exemption categories and now their extension are merely “transitional” and few people will claim them. The truth is that the White House is trying to shield Democrats in advance from the millions of angry voters who will be penalized for not buying into ObamaCare. Such raw politics helps explain why Ms. Sebelius won’t be “accurate” about relaxing enforcement of the individual mandate.
Sebelius vs. Accuracy – WSJ.com.
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