Feb 20 2014
Enforcement of a variety of sweeping new laws has often been delayed, Bloomberg News reports. Meanwhile, Vice President Joe Biden said Wednesday that Obamacare enrollment is off to a "hell of a start."
Bloomberg: Obamacare Rewrites Of Health Law Rile Republicans
President Barack Obama's repeated postponement of deadlines in the rollout of his health-care overhaul has sparked accusations from Republicans that he's straying into dangerous territory by rewriting the law. He's not the first president to follow his own timetable instead of the one passed by Congress ... Deadlines set in laws are "aspirational dates," said Ross Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University (Dorning, 2/20).
The Star Tribune: Biden In Minneapolis: Health Insurance Signup Is 'Hell Of A Start'
Vice President Joe Biden told visitors to a Minneapolis coffee shop on Wednesday that the millions of people likely to sign up for health insurance before a March deadline is "a hell of a start," despite the fact that the federal government probably will fall short of its goal. ... He used the occasion to talk about the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which has been under heavy criticism since President Obama began pushing the reform and has drawn additional ire in recent months after a botched rollout (Simons, 2/19).
The Associated Press: Biden: Health Care Sign-Ups May Fall Short Of Goal
Open enrollment under the federal law ends on March 31, after which people without insurance are subject to federal tax penalties. ... Biden acknowledged the rocky rollout of the administration's Affordable Care Act website and the difficulty people have had in signing up. ... Before the exchanges launched, the Obama administration projected monthly enrollment targets based on a congressional estimate that 7 million would sign up during the six-month open enrollment period (Condon, 2/19).
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 This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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Families scramble to pay five-figure bills as clock ticks on promised preauthorization reforms