The Most Recent Obamacare Delay is Just the Opening Blow in Another Policy Battle

By Cassie Chambers

On Tuesday, the White House announced that it would delay implementing PPACA’s requirement that large employers provide their employees with health insurance.

Democrats portrayed this decision as evidence of legislations’s flexibility, arguing it showed the Administration’s commitment to work with the private sector to improve the regulations. Republicans rejected this framing, calling the maneuver a “a cynical political ploy to delay the coming train wreck associated with Obamacare until after the 2014 elections.”

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

The White House should be applauded for paying the political cost of delay in order to avoid prematurely implementing problematic regulations. Yet the need for delay in the first place is indicative of systemic issues Obamacare will face moving forward.

While this particular delay won’t significantly impact how and when the majority of Americans get healthcare coverage under PPACA, some of the issues the legislation will face in the coming months threaten its very core.

The most notable of these issues is the fast-approaching deadline for states to implement healthcare exchanges. These exchanges provide a significant part of the legislation’s impact by creating a market to provide insurance to traditional un- or under-insured groups. Obamacare requires that all states have fully functional exchanges in place by January 1, 2014.

Yet implementation of these exchanges continues to be an uphill battle for states. In some cases, politics is to blame, as Republican-controlled legislatures delay passing the necessary authorizing and funding legislation. Such moves are backed by right-wing interest groups committed to blocking this key part of the legislation in order to “gut” the larger bill. For other states, pure uncertainty is to blame, as they struggle to create a new market for a complex product.

The failure of many states to create operational exchanges means that the federal government will step in and run exchanges in well over half of the states. Such a move, while necessary, subtly and fundamentally changes the nature of healthcare reform. What was designed to be a program where individual states were given significant leeway to experiment with various market structures, will be transformed into a series of standardized, centralized programs. States will fail to create the innovations that would have come from forcing them to find creative ways to meet the health needs of their populations.

The exchanges aren’t the end of the story. As implementation of PPACA continues, the legislation is likely to meet staunch Republican opposition at every corner. Given Democrats’ recent re-commitment to Obamacare’s implementation, the end result will be many more announcements like the one we saw Tuesday: Republicans successfully obstructing an aspect of PPACA’s implementation; Democrats determined to find a way around this obstruction in their chosen path. The change and compromise forced by these hard-line party stances will eat away at the nuance and intricacy that made PPACA innovative.

Thus, America begins another round in the fight over healthcare reform. Although both sides have suffered significant blows previously, neither appears to show any signs fatigue. Thus, while we may be entering anouther round in this fight, this round is sure to be far from the final one.

The Petrie-Flom Center Staff

The Petrie-Flom Center staff often posts updates, announcements, and guests posts on behalf of others.

2 thoughts to “The Most Recent Obamacare Delay is Just the Opening Blow in Another Policy Battle”

  1. In France, we are terribly favored on the bearing of the costs of health. The American evolutions on this subject surprise us a little because it seems to us obvious today to benefit from a Social Security.

  2. In France, we are terribly favored on the bearing of the costs of health. The American evolutions on this subject surprise us a little because it seems to us obvious today to benefit from a Social Security.

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