On Thanksgiving Eve while the rest of the nation was getting ready to celebrate Thanksgiving with their families the Obama Administration dumped reams of regulations into the Federal Register – including yet more unilateral rewrites of the Affordable Care Act. 
And the changes are substantial:
- Obama will require large employers to provide more coverage than the Affordable Care Act specifies. The move disqualifies plans now offered by 1,600 employers to 3 million workers, according to Kaiser Health News. Those employers will have to find a way to cover the higher costs — and some will surely do so by stopping coverage for spouses or part-time workers.
- The new rules suddenly treat state high-risk pools as adequate coverage under the Affordable Care Act — a 180 from what the law actually says.
When the ACA became law, these plans for people with chronic illnesses were offered in 35 states. Winners will be those who live in the 10 states that haven’t yet phased out their high-risk plans. Losers: the many thousands in 25 states that already gave up their plans to comply with the ACA’s mandates. - The rules tell insurers to give new enrollees a 30-day grace period during which they can continue to use doctors not in their plan’s network. Winners: people who need time to switch to in-network doctors. Losers: taxpayers — who’ll be obliged to bail out the insurers clobbered with the extra cost.
- Speaking of bailouts, Section 1342 of the law promises taxpayer-funded bailouts to insurers that lose money selling plans on ObamaCare exchanges. But the bailouts can’t happen unless Congress appropriates the money, something the GOP-controlled Congress won’t want to do. Yet the new Federal Register notices explicitly double down on the administration’s pledge to make insurers whole if losses are bigger than expected.
Under the Constitution, Obama lacks any authority to make such changes to the health law, or any law. Only Congress has that power. But he’s doing it, and not for the first time. This is an impeachable offense, which congress is duty bound by their oaths of office to carry out. Yet, they have taken the unconstitutional “dog and pony show” route to sue him. This type of lawlessness is exactly why the checks and balances were put in place in our Constitutional Republic. Our representatives tolerance for this lawlessness should make us as voters examine exactly who we’ve been electing to go to Washington. If your representative isn’t one of the ones filing articles of impeachment, it might be time to reconsider your choice next election cycle.
Read more HERE.
