A major provision of the healthcare reform law designed to prevent businesses from dropping coverage for their workers could inadvertently leave families without access to subsidized health insurance.
The problem is a huge headache for the Obama administration and congressional Democrats, because it could leave families unable to buy affordable health insurance when the healthcare law requires that everyone be insured starting in 2014.
Some of the administration’s closest allies on healthcare reform warn this situation could dramatically undercut support for the law, which already is unpopular with many voters and contributed to Democrats losing the House in the 2010 midterm elections.
“It’s going to be a massive problem if it comes out that families have to buy really expensive employer-based coverage,” said Jocelyn Guyer, deputy executive director at Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families.
“If they don’t fix this — and by ‘they’ I mean either the administration or Congress — we’re going to have middle-class families extremely unhappy with [healthcare] reform in 2014, because they’ll basically be facing financial penalties for not buying coverage when they don’t have access to any affordable options.”
That’s just wonderful. Maybe if they had read the bill before passing it rather than passing it so we can see what’s in it, they could’ve figured this out, first.
Instead, this plan that was supposed to make it all affordable, and the plan on which “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your plan you can keep your plan. Period.” has become “Well you might be able to keep your doctor, and maybe your plan, and if you’re really lucky it won’t cost you more.”
This is what happens when the government does health care, folks. It screws it up. And not only does it screw it up, it costs you more.
No wonder all of the people who supported it got waivers as soon as it went into effect.