Obamacare delays create bad timing for Democrats in 2014 election

Sam Baker:

Some of Obamacare’s most damaging political narratives will be getting a fresh look right before next year’s midterms, thanks to delays in the law’s implementation.

Canceled insurance plans are the most obvious example. President Obama said last week that insurers can un-cancel certain policies for another year, a move largely designed to appease nervous Democrats. But a one-year delay simply means that cancellation notices will resume next October—just weeks before many of those same Democrats will face voters for the first time since voting to pass the Affordable Care Act.

And that’s not the only political threat lurking just ahead of the 2014 midterms. The White House also delayed the law’s employer mandate until 2015. That means employers will be deciding in mid- to late 2014 whether they’re going to offer health benefits under the mandate—and whether to cut employees’ hours to avoid providing them with health care.

“They’re concentrating everything in the fall of next year, and that’s a very dangerous time to be doing it,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a conservative economist who leads the American Action Forum.

The fact that millions of individual insurance policies were canceled this year was not a side effect of the Affordable Care Act; rather, it was one of the trade-offs required to make the law’s coverage guarantees work.

Those trade-offs can be politically difficult, but prolonging the issue until next year “just extends the pain for them,” Holtz-Eakin said. He was surprised that the administration and congressional Democrats didn’t simply bite the bullet now—a year before the midterms. He called it the “rip-the-Band-Aid approach.”

“This is one where, inexplicably, the wheels came off. They usually think through the politics of these things pretty clearly,” Holtz-Eakin said.

Still, although plans will have to be canceled again next October, there are reasons to believe the issue won’t be as damaging as it has been over the past two months. For starters, it’s not clear how many plans will actually be extended for another year. Several states have rejected Obama’s proposal, and insurers aren’t sure whether it’s worth the trouble to resurrect policies they have already canceled.
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This law is going to be a continuing wound for Democrats as it harms more Americans.  It has been a job killer for months and it is causing the canceling of more policies than its is covering.  It is going to be a long term disaster for Democrats who are doing their typical thing when they screw up, they are looking to avoid responsibility and blame Republicans for the mess they created.