President Barack Obama's latest delay of an employer provision of the Affordable Care Act was a politically calculated strategy to save the Democrats in the run-up to the 2014 midterm elections, says Karl Rove.
In his column for
The Wall Street Journal, the veteran GOP strategist says that by delaying the requirement until 2016 for businesses to provide health insurance, the president is aiming to avoid a repeat of the backlash last fall when Americans lost their health insurance policies because they didn't conform to the requirements of the new federal healthcare law.
ObamaCare: You Can Win With The Facts
"Why did the president do this? Politics. Mr. Obama saw the firestorm that erupted last fall when Americans lost their health policies because their policies didn't conform to Obamacare's requirement for 'essential benefits' and other mandates," Rove writes.
Rove explains that without the delay, millions would have lost their insurance plans this year because there are already disincentives in the law for small businesses to provide health coverage.
"The president didn't want another avalanche of cancellations before this fall's midterm election," he said, adding that if millions lose their insurance plans shortly before the election, "the consequences would be disastrous for the president's popularity, and that of the congressional Democrats who loyally voted for the Affordable care Act, sight and text unread."
The president had initially
announced in July a one-year delay of the requirements to 2015
.
"The dirty little secret is that this loss of coverage is by design," Rove writes. "Obamacare was intended to move America toward a single-payer system as more small businesses dropped coverage, dumped workers into the exchanges, and substituted a $2,000 fine for the ever-increasing premiums."
"Mr. Obama is constantly amending his own law not because it doesn't do what it was intended to do, but because it's accomplishing precisely what it was meant to. His challenge is to transform the system without blowing up his party in the meantime."
Rove says that this latest decision is one in a long list of examples of how the president intends to defer the true consequences of a number of his policies until he is out of office.
"From the record number of Americans on food stamps to the worst labor-force participation rate since the 1970s to rising political polarization to retreating U.S. power overseas and increasing Middle East chaos and violence, Mr. Obama's successor—Republican or Democratic—will inherit a mess."
According to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the latest change marks Obama's 22nd delay or modification to his signature healthcare law. Republicans have blasted the administration saying it's the latest evidence that the program is a
"train wreck."
ObamaCare: You Can Win With The Facts
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