Obama pulls plug on part of health overhaul law

[Geee]

APNews:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration Friday pulled the plug on a major program in the president's signature health overhaul law - a long-term care insurance plan dogged from the beginning by doubts over its financial solvency.

Targeted by congressional Republicans for repeal, the program became the first casualty in the political and policy wars over the health care law. It had been expected to launch in 2013.

"This is a victory for the American taxpayer and future generations," said Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., spearheading opposition in the Senate. "The administration is finally admitting (the long-term care plan) is unsustainable and cannot be implemented."

Proponents, including many groups that fought to pass the health care law, have vowed a vigorous effort to rescue the program, insisting that Congress gave the administration broad authority to make changes. Long-term care includes not only nursing homes, but such services as home health aides for disabled people.

[RandyM]

So I guess there must be absolutely no doubt about the financial solvency of the rest of Obamacare.

[clearvision]

I don't like the part about Congress giving the administration broad authority to make changes.

[clearvision]

OK, it turns out that this program was used to help fund the health care law. For the 1st five years it did not pay out, just collected new fees. These were used as part of the revenue stream to make the health care law revenue neutral. I don't suppose the law automatically fails if the "assumptions" used to finance are not working....

[clearvision]

From the WSJ

 

This design made it possible for the Congressional Budget Office to score the program as a money-raiser during its first decade and thus make ObamaCare look like it reduced the deficit. And sure enough, CBO, in its final estimate at passage, said that Class would reduce the deficit by $70 billion through 2019—or more than half the bill's supposed $124 billion 10-year "savings" to the federal fisc. Well, goodbye to all that.

 

During the health-care debate Washington insisted on treating CBO's cost estimates as if God Himself had carved them into stone tablets, but as Class's mercy killing shows all they proved was that Democrats were good at manipulating its assumptions and synthetic budget conventions. HHS's own experts were warning Democrats all along that Class was a fiscal time bomb, so including it in the bill was a special act of fiscal corruption.