Viewed in the most favorable light, the Obama administration’s decision this week to extend ObamaCare’s enrollment deadline into the middle of April is a measure of justice to people forced to buy health insurance but unable to complete the transaction because of lousy government websites. Simply put, it’s just wrong to penalize people for failing at a task the government makes it impossible to do.
However, for every person receiving his due there are others getting the shaft. For example, consider all the people who diligently signed up for coverage last fall, spending hours surfing through glitch-prone websites and incoherent call centers, all because the Obama administration swore up-and-down that insurance had to be purchased by mid-December if coverage was wanted on January 1st. And then the deadline was extended.
Recall that millions of people lost their individual and family plans because they didn’t comply with ObamaCare’s heightened benefits mandates. Responsible customers swallowed hard and leapt into an ObamaCare exchange because the government said so. And then the Obama administration decided not to enforce its own law.
And let’s not forget the insurance companies, business owners and tax experts who spent thousands of hours trying to comply with ObamaCare’s deadlines and mandates only to watch those who did little or nothing to prepare get rewarded with delay after delay, or as we used to say during the last Bush administration, bailout after bailout.
So while it is true that it’s unjust that people should be penalized for government’s failures, it is equally unjust to punish those who are trying valiantly to play by the rules but then get hosed by last minute changes. The takeaway here is that the implementation of ObamaCare is destroying the incentive to take the government at its word. If this becomes its legacy, the law will be far more destructive than anyone thought possible.
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