Obamacare waivers on ice — for now
Well, well, well. How’s this for a weekend news dump? The White House is waving goodbye to Obamacare waivers.
The announcement comes as questions about the legality of the HHS program are swelling and challenges to the process persist.
The Overlords of Transparency always have impeccable timing. Also: Indefatigable denial.
Removing a potential political distraction ahead of next year’s elections, the Obama administration Friday announced an early end to a health care waiver program that has come under fire from congressional Republicans.
Political considerations were “absolutely not” part of the decision, said Steve Larsen, head of a section of the Health and Human Services department that oversees President Barack Obama’s health care law.
Larsen said no new applications for waivers will be considered after Sept. 22. Approvals or renewals received by the deadline will be good through 2013. Starting in 2014, the main coverage provisions of the health care law will take effect, and such waivers will no longer be needed.
Famous last words.
Now, mark my words. This is an Obamacare architectural fantasy that will NOT materialize as projected:
Instead of approving a new batch of year-long waivers every month, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that plans have until Sept. 22 to apply for a waiver that will carry through 2013. In 2014, taxpayer-subsidized insurance will be available to most of the people now covered by the affected plans.
After patting themselves on the back for monthly disclosures of a waiver list that keeps on growing and growing and growing, the White House media strategists realized how damaging the backlash has become.
Disclosure = headache. No more disclosure = no more public scrutiny.
Expect a resurrection of the waivers in some other name or form. As I noted last month, the next sector clamoring for escape hatches from costly Obamacare mandates include nursing homes And as the White House itself signaled in April, HHS bureaucrats have been plotting the process for extending waivers into 2012 and 2013.
I guarantee you: Unions, Democrat lobbying groups, and liberal execs will find a way to get their exemptions — and the White House will find a way to distribute their crony waivers by another name.
Conservative pressure drove Obamacare favor-dispensers underground. Let’s make sure conservative pressure drives them out of power and deprives them of their selective enforcement authority once and for all.
***
Previous:
5/18/11 Waive Me
5/16/11 Waiver-mania: Now, nursing homes lobby for Obamacare pardon; Update: San Francisco’s escape hatch
4/4/11 Shhh: HHS grants more Obamacare waivers, considers new 2012-2013 scheme
3/25/11 The Weiner Waiver Wormhole
2/7/11 Look who makes RomneyCare/MassCare’s waiver decisions (Hint: Rhymes with Ess-Eee-Eye-You)
1/28/11 Waivers for Favors: Big Labor’s Obamacare escape hatch
1/26/11 The real snow job in D.C.: Obamacare waivers skyrocket to 729 + 4 states; 4 new SEIU waiver winners
1/24/11 Investigating Obamacare Waiver-mania
12/10/10 Obamacare Waiver-mania! continues: List tops 222
11/17/10 Dude, where’s my Obamacare waiver?
11/14/10 Waiver-mania! The ever-expanding Obamacare escapee list
10/6/10 Obamacare waivers: Torquemada Sebelius spares McDonald’s, unions
9/30/10 Will there be a McDonald’s Inquistion now? Torquemada Sebelius tightens the screws
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And Republicare was going to be acceptable?
RWR
http://www.rightwingrocker.com
Hear hear.
RWR
http://www.righwingrocker.com
No. I decided Obama/Biden would be even more dangerous to the country than McCain/Palin would have been.
You and Phil, on the other hand, decided it would be better to have Obama nominating Supreme Court Justices and dozens of other federal judges to serve for many decades, and to be controlling the vast American military and its ability to wage war, and making and wrecking foreign policy in general, and appointing communists like Van Jones into positions of power within the federal bureaucracy (while eliminating anyone who actually gives a damn about the country), and cramming obamacare down our throats and so on and on and on.
Would McCain have been terrible, even godawful terrible? You bet your ass he would have been.
Would he have been “just the same as” Obama? What kind of damnfool idiot thinks that?
And even if you dream now that Obama’s election has caused a political blowback that will sweep away the marxists in our government, giving him four more years to wreck us is just plain suicidal lunacy.
Sadly, Phil, I have to agree with this statement.
Roland either hates Obama and anyone with a D next to his/her name, or has been hoodwinked by the Republicans into believing they were really interested in conservatism. In the first scenario to him, a liberal fascist nutjob in Washington, DC is perfectly ok, as long as it’s the one HE voted for. In the second, he is merely playing the role of party loyalist in the feeble hope that somehow someday the Republicans will come around to a conservative way of thinking.
I’m perfectly fine with all that vis a vis Roland is concerned. The problem lies in his disdain for those who are actually doing what needs to be done to solve the problem in a timely fashion rather than put up with 4, 8, 12, 16 or more years of more of the same before actually demanding a real solution.
The GOP doesn’t have to do anything different to get Roland’s vote. They can run idiot morons with essentially the same illegal agenda in election after election, and he will not only gladly vote for said idiot morons, but demonize those who correctly point out that said idiot morons are who and what they are.
If only socialist nutbags are “electable”, then America is already dead. I refuse to accept that. If Roland wants to demonize me for it, and he has, he can go right ahead. It does not bother me in the least.
When all of his liberties and freedoms are gone, I will merely shrug. I won’t rub his nose in it.
RWR
http://www.rightwingrocker.com
So you voted for White-haired Obama and long-haired Biden.
What is really a shame is that you openly admit that McCain/Palin would have been dangerous to the country, yet you hold so much disdain for those who stood against ALL of the “dangerous” candidates.
Go and vote for these people if you like, Roland. No one here is asking you to do otherwise. What we are asking you to do is stop demonizing those of us who choose more conservative ways of thinking. If your root beliefs are as you say they are, then it is really only a matter of time before you become a Tea Partier.
RWR
http://www.rightwingrocker.com
Me.
In fact, Obama did something no one could have even predicted and that McCain would never have done. He brought about the greatest self-education movement this country has seen since 1787, when the Anti-Federalists stood against ratification of the Constitution because (go figure) they thought it opened too many doors to big oppressive government.
Because of Obama, there is actually hope that the Republicans might offer something acceptable, though the current crop isn’t very encouraging. Sadly, all I am seeing is people getting all excited about this candidate or that instead of really analyzing them and demanding something better. When the closest thing you have to a proper candidate is Ron Paul (and he isn’t even being looked at as anything serious), your party is SERIOUSLY DEFICIENT. When Mitt Romney is your frontrunner, you have already lost the election.
It’s all fair and well for Republicans, but it’s not going to do anything to expedite the survival of America. She is the real victim.
RWR
http://www.rightwingrocker.com
What is bizarre is your persistent inability to grasp the fact that there is no “none of the above” choice about which one is going to get the power.
But there IS write-in, and there ARE more than two parties on the ballot.
For voting for Marxist McCain, I could just as easily sit here and call you a Marxist sympathizer.
The fact that I don’t and you simultaneously fly off the handle is indicative of who the better man is.
Have a nice day.
RWR
http://www.rightwingrocker.com
As I said, your persistent inability to grasp the reality is bizarre. So a name is on the ballot. And you think that is meaningful in some way just by being on the ballot, even though no one on the planet actually thinks that person is going to get voted to have the power?
Amazing. Bizarre.
Your thinking is the thinking of people voting in popularity contests, where there is really nothing at stake.
Since some of you have a problem with my position when I say it, let Michelle explain it to you.
Bush/GOP TARP for Mexico.
In fact, before you liberal “Republican Uber Alles” take over these blog threads, why don’t we all stroll through Michelle’s postings on what is wrong with the GOP. I’ll bet you guys didn’t even realize Michelle is a Marxist.
It just doesn’t make sense to keep voting for the Kennedy/Bush/McCain/Rove/Enron party. Let’s take it over or wreck it. I’m not going to live forever and I’ve had it with these guys.
Riight. You guys regularly call me a RINO because I won’t support an approach to voting that will guarantee the reelection of an anti-American marxist, but I’m the one behaving badly.
Sigh.
Roland, if a name is on a ballot, that candidate can be elected… if enough people vote for that candidate. And as we saw in 1992, winning with 43% of the vote is NOT a mandate. I just don’t understand why you can’t break out of your tunnel vision. You are enslaved to the establishment mind set. You don’t like where the road goes but you keep taking that road. Try something else!
No, your only option is to vote for the other anti-American marxist. Excellent thinking.
Not on election day. You might make that claim back in the eighteenth century, before modern polling and news. You might even be able to make that claim before the advent of the internet, if you reeeeeeeally stretched the meaning of “possible,” since you could spin wild theories about the polls being way, way, waaaaaaay off and the ‘news’ people lying far more spectacularly than they even did for Obama in 2008.
But as of election day, 2008, only someone seriously disconnected from reality would have thought there was even a snowflake’s chance in Hell of Bob Barr actually being elected.
The chance the Earth would be sucked up into a wandering black hole on election day was probably a million times more likely.
Riight. Because They Are All The Same.
No difference at all between the only two real choices we had.
One would choose Biden for VP, the other Palin. One voted against Obamacare, the other one ….. well is Obama.
You can’t tell the difference?
Oh, well.
Roland, Dante wrote a poem about a hell full of situations just like the one you have created for yourself. You are just incapable of seeing the trap. Even rats work their out of the maze eventually. How long will it take for you? Your solution has failure built in write from square one. Try something else.
Better yet, why don’t you just get out of the way. Your the guy on the Titanic who won’t get on the life boat because he can’t swim but won’t stand aside to let others board. You are your own worst enemy.
right not write. My fingers have a mind of their own.
Roland, stop voting against people and find a candidate you can actually feel good about. Vote your convictions, not your fears. You epitomize what is wrong with the lame GOP. You have no convictions but have some irrational fear that somehow a Republican marxist is better than a Democratic marxist.
With your plan, that choice is inevitable because of your defeatist assumption that everyone else is “unelectable”. Wrong.
Ah, but you see, I haven’t ‘created’ anything. Reality is what it is.
You escape the ‘situation’ by pretending it doesn’t exist. That is what is known as “disconnection from reality.”
That is a very common problem with folks on the Left, so it is no surprise you both end up spending your energies working for the election of the most leftist guy around.
So it’s hopeless right Roland? You hate the status quo but you dare not do anything that might change it. The American Revolution was a hopeless cause too. Thank God our founding fathers didn’t think like you. Why do you even post here? Do you not read what Michelle writes? Are you here just to undermine her work?
I’m finished with this thread. I’ve got things to do.
Again you express thinking that is more like that of a leftist ‘idealist’ than that of a conservative.
I know all about the fallibility of humans. I know any candidate I find will be one in which I will see flaws. Serious flaws.
Humans have feet of clay. I will look hard for their flaws, just as I will look to find support for what they claim to be good about themselves, and then I will weigh the good against the bad in each candidate. And then I choose which flawed human will get the power over me.
I have pointed out some of the flaws I see with some of the candidates I have also told you I could support, like Bachmann’s thinking on rape and abortion.
Perhaps that is part of what makes you think my thinking is “all over the place.” My thinking is rational and realistic. I don’t hew to a blind ideology that leaves me the victim of some demagogue telling me what I want to hear.
That is a total misrepresentation of everything I’ve said, but you probably think it’s true. You cannot grasp that fighting for each square foot of ground, fighting from door to door, is not the same as giving up and thinking we cannot succeed.
You see flattening the city as the only way to save it.
FIFY.
RWR
http://www.rightwingrocker.com
Indeed.
RWR
http://www.rightwingrocker.cm
It’s ok Roland.
We will fight without you, and if/when you decide to join the cause of beating ALL of the Marxists in Washington, we will welcome you.
Just like your party doesn’t want conservative votes, we can forge on and win without you. The Left (Democrat and Republican alike) has already flattened the city. The argument now is what to do with it. Do we want to go forward assuming that Marxism is ok, or reestablish the Constitution as the supreme law of the land? Republicans and Democrats want to rebuild it as a socialist republic and do away with the Constitution and the liberties you enjoy as a result of its inception. If you are willing to sit back and accept big government a la GOP because you think it is safely better than the so-called “opposition”, then go right ahead.
I’m not going to do that, because America cannot survive it. As such, I will support America. Give me an acceptable candidate, and you get my vote. Give me Mickey Mouse, and you don’t.
I’m no longer a Republican insider, so I couldn’t give two $h!ts what happens to your worthless little party.
RWR
http://www.rightwingrocker.com
If you really believed on election day that McCain/Palin had less than a snowflake’s chance in Hell of winning, then voting for someone else would make sense. If I had been absolutely certain they would lose, I might have cast my vote for Duncan Hunter …… although I considered Obama so damned bloody dangerous to the country, I can’t say for sure (he has actually been much less damaging than I had expected, so far, so imagine how dangerous I thought he was).
And I liked Palin.
When you know for a fact your vote makes no difference, and you are there in the booth anyway, voting on other races, then your vote becomes meaningless, anyway, and so ‘making a statement’ doesn’t cost anything.
But you can never be wrong, or you were wrong every time. It would mean your judgment is not good enough to be making that kind of decision.
BTW, this is one of the reasons I voted for Perot in 1992 even though I knew on election day that he had no chance to win. I also thought Bush had no chance.
Back then I also thought I was much smarter than I think I am today.
Bush actually lost in 1992 by a closer margin (5.5%) than McCain did in 2008 (7.2%), so I am very sympathetic to the argument in that particular race.
If you and I and Phil are here as the election nears, we can compare notes then. If I don’t like the R candidate, and Obama is walking away with it anyway, then I might be joining you both in a protest vote.
Sigh. You guys are so compulsively loyalty group oriented it appears you are completely incapable of conceiving of a person not thinking that way.
RWR,
I think I give Congress less credit for organizational skills than you do. They always seem to be missing deadlines. Maybe better to have a “temp” thing for the military if they went with your “sunset everything” plan; force it to keep coming up until they deal with it, but don’t ditch the Armed Forces.
I am a nose-holder. If I didn’t hold my nose, I couldn’t vote at all. I never really “like” any of them. My voting for Republicans is not out of some affection for the Republican party. I’m for gay marriage. I think school vouchers are a big government initiative. I am aware that a lot of Republicans wander left when I don’t want them to.
In a presidential race, I don’t give much consideration to third parties as a matter of pragmatism. I’d have to be equally disgusted with the Repub and Dem candidates and it hasn’t happened yet.
I do frequently look at third parties on smaller races, where I think they might have a better chance. They have a strong tendency to run people with views that I like even less than the Republican views or people who just don’t seem to have a lot of views in the first place. (The Independent Greens hate Republicans and Democrats and like trains. They want to get people to run. As far as I know, that is their entire platform, and I have seen independents run with less of a platform than that. One of our Libertarian candidates referred to the US as an empire on his website and made clear he thought the US didn’t get along with Iran because we were picking on Muslims.)
Since the health care bill made me even less likely to ever vote for a Democrat, I have taken an interest in Republican primaries. That seems like one way to try to get better candidates. I also think local races are important for that, and the last I saw, some of our local races only have one person on the ballot. I tend to think other localities are the same. So maybe that’s a good place to focus if you want to work for a different type of candidate.
Great. Another purist/noseholder debate.
More fun word associations:
Al Jazeera Court TV
Swearing on the Koran
Mirandizing Aymen Al-Zawahiri
Gloria Aldred representing Bin Laden’s wives
EER! sorry wrong thread, wierd computer day.
The true motive to this seems to be peaking its ugly head up:
The liberals got their waivers, and now they wish to prevent dissenters from taking advantage of the situation (read: denying [conservative] states the right to waive themselves from the burden of the Obamacare nightmare)
Liberal.
Sorry, I can’t give credence to anybody in favor of promoting oxymorons as a matter of public policy.
I stopped reading right there.
Judging which side of the political aisle someone is on in general due to one position that isn’t in lockstep with…somebody. Sounds like fun
The waivers seem like an admission that Obamacare is really bad policy. I think if I actually were a left-of-center, or at least a supporter of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid crowd, I’d be thoroughly embarrassed by those things, especially the ones going to unions. Are rank-and-file left-of-centers embarrassed?