Mark Mazur
Responding to business concerns, the Obama administration announced Tuesday that it would delay until 2015 the new health care law’s mandate that employers provide workers with health insurance.
New reporting requirements of the Affordable Care Act will also be delayed a year. Questions about the new employer mandate and reporting requirements have been a concern for businesses across the nation, including in and around Oak Ridge.
“We have heard concerns about the complexity of the requirements and the need for more time to implement them effectively,” said Mark J. Mazur, assistant secretary for tax policy. Mazur made the announcement on the U.S. Treasury Department’s website.
U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican, said the delay will make a “giant mess” of the law’s individual mandate because, presumably, individuals are still required to purchase insurance.
“This is ‘Obamacare’ unraveling,” Alexander said in a Tuesday evening press release. “Pushing the implementation of the employer mandate until after the 2014 election confirms the law was an historic mistake. It should be repealed and replaced with effective legislation that will reduce costs by involving patients in health care decision making.”
The Obama administration said major portions of the law have yet to be implemented, but the administration is on target to open the Health Insurance Marketplace on Oct. 1. Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to President Barack Obama, said it would give small businesses and ordinary Americans one place to go to “learn about their coverage options and make side-by-side comparisons of each plan’s price and benefits before they make their decision.”
In a White House blog post, she said the administration was “cutting red tape and simplifying the reporting process” and “giving businesses more time to comply,” including for new reporting requirements.
Time magazine reported that the so-called employer mandate, which penalizes employers with more than 50 employees if they fail to provide a minimum standard of affordable health insurance, was set to kick in in 2014, but now will take effect in 2015.
More information will be added as it becomes available.
David A. Vudragovich says
“…the administration is on target to open the Health Insurance Marketplace on Oct. 1”
When IEP (Initial Enrollment Period) begins. Coverage starts January 1, 2014, given no other changes.
I will be presenting on the changes in July and August, watch my ad on the right for when and where.
Mark Caldwell says
Please take a high-school level civics class. It might help if you want to be taken seriously.
Denny Phiilips says
Oh, don’t get me wrong, I am happy with this revelation. I now know that if a Republican President is elected he can simply wave his hand and all the new regulations and deadlines included in ACA can be eliminated.
Ck Kelsey says
Where is the lesson about using the IRS to attack people’s lives Mark? To enforce “Obamacare”?
They didn’t teach you anything about the Constitution?
Helen Standifer says
That has fizzled. They were a bunch or bored accountants. I was one once, auditor, not IRS.
Ck Kelsey says
Here’s Civics 101 .
Rep. Steve King: Obama Must ‘Come to Congress’ to Make ObamaCare Changes:
“President Obama has no constitutional authority to amend his own bill,” King asserted. “He has no constitutional authority to simply waive the law. No matter Obama’s determination to suspend his own law, only Congress can do so.”
Helen Standifer says
Rep. Steve King thinks women can’t get pregant from rape because their bodies “emit something”. Steven King doesn’t have sense God gave a goose. He doesn’t know anything but how to stir up his constituants with nonsense. He said “wild, maurauding, illegal aliens were invading his office”. Please don’t use him in any argument you to be taken seriously.
Denny Phillips says
This is a wonderful precedent that is being set, a President that decides which laws he will enforce. I imagine a day when a conservative President decides that he/she just won’t enforce any taxation at all ending all federal functions altogether.
Ck Kelsey says
It’s all about the 2014 Election. The policies of the Obama regime are SO BAD that they can’t implement them while people can still vote. Think about it .
Ck Kelsey says
http://www.unitedliberty.org/articles/14218-employer-mandate-delay-an-attempt-to-save-democrats-in-2014
The delay of the policy has caused opponents of the law to point back to comments made by Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) back in April when he expressed frustration at the Obama Administration’s implementation effort, calling it a “train wreck.” It also takes us back just a couple of weeks, when DHHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told Democrats not to worry about news reports of people losing their health insurance coverage.
It is tacit admission that ObamaCare, President Obama’s signature law, is not meeting expectations. If the administration is forced to delay further implementations of major parts of the law or they implement them when they’re not ready, things could get very bad, very quickly.
This was politically motivated, though the Obama Administration will never admit it. NBC News, one of the administrations foremost apologists in the media, is trying to spin the news by noting that other major aspects of the law, including the individual mandate and state exchanges, aren’t being delayed.