Obamacare’s new troubles

Despite an intense final push to get people to sign up for health insurance before the March 31 deadline, the Obama administration admitted this week that enrollment in Obamacare was slowing. Some 943,000 people enrolled in February, less than the two previous months, bringing the total to 4.2 million—well short of the 7 million the White House hoped to bring on by the end of this month. Once again, the administration announced delays in deadlines set in the Affordable Care Act, saying that people with noncompliant, bare-bones plans can keep them through 2016. Republicans said the latest delay conveniently avoids the prospect of policy cancellation notices arriving on doorsteps just before midterm elections in November.

Obamacare had a disappointing February, said Sam Baker in NationalJournal.com, but with an expected last-minute surge, enrollment by March 31 will end up near 5.3 million. “From the White House’s perspective, that’s good enough for a year marred by the botched HealthCare.gov launch and a series of confusing delays.” As long as premiums don’t skyrocket next year, Obamacare will become “an ingrained part of the U.S. health-care system.”

Then why is the White House doing everything it can to rewrite a law that’s clearly failing? asked The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. Administration officials last week also quietly rescinded the individual mandate for this year, slipping in a loophole allowing uninsured individuals to avoid a fine as long as they file a document stating that their previous plan was terminated because of Obamacare and “believe” all new alternative health-care plans to be unaffordable. After a long series of politically motivated rewrites, the law must now be “unrecognizable to its drafters.”

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A major overhaul of Obamacare is inevitable, said Yevgeniy Feyman in Forbes.com. The proportion of young enrollees remains low—around 25 percent instead of the 40 percent goal—and even under the sunniest of scenarios, 30 million people are likely to remain uninsured long-term. When Democrats admit the law needs serious fixing, Republicans must decide “whether they will be at the table negotiating, or booing on the sidelines.”