Freedom Line Blog

First the feds, now the states.

“To be clear, the state says it’s not an extension of the open enrollment period scheduled to close March 31. Only Marylanders who made an attempt to enroll by March 31 will get more time if they call a state hotline by that day. All four insurers selling on Maryland’s exchange agreed to the special extension,” explains the Washington Post.

Oregon and Nevada are also weighing whether to grant extensions for enrollment. Like Maryland, their residents have found it extremely difficult to complete the sign-up process for subsidized ObamaCare plans due to glitch-prone public websites.

Of course, anyone who’s watched the news since last October knows that the federal exchange – Healthcare.gov – has been notoriously difficult to use. So perhaps it’s no wonder that the Obama administration is considering granting its own extension to allow enrollment to continue after the original drop-dead date.

Granted, it’s not an individual’s fault that a government’s website is impossible to use. And it’s unfair in the extreme to turn around and penalize the same person when a government-imposed deadline passes without the mandated sign-up. But perhaps news of an extension would be easier to swallow if it wasn’t grouped with more than 30 other intentional delays that further complicate the law.

The news of enrollment extensions isn’t surprising. In its most basic elements, ObamaCare doesn’t work. But for its supporters propping it up with all kinds of extra-legal maneuvers, the law would collapse under the weight of its failed promises.

And it just so happens to be the most crucial.

With only 4.2 million of the original 7 million Obamacare exchange enrollees confirmed, officials at the Department of Health and Human Services were asked yesterday whether they would extend the March 31 deadline.

“We have no plans to extend the open enrollment period,” responded an HHS official, according to the Weekly Standard. “In fact, we don’t actually have the statutory authority to extend the open enrollment period in 2014.” (Emphasis added)

Of course, none of the controversial Obamacare delays are rooted in the law’s statutory text. When pressed for an explanation of how the enrollment deadline is different from the extra-legal delays of the individual mandate, employer mandate, small business exchange, Cadillac tax and thirty other extensions, the HHS spokespeople had no credible response.

The question remains, though, Why not extend the enrollment period in order to get more sign-ups? My guess is that broadening the enrollment timeline would quickly destroy the Obama administration’s ability ever to impose another deadline. As we saw last week with the second yearlong delay allowing non-compliant individual plans to continue, once an exception is made the firmness needed to impose a new drop-dead-date disintegrates. Rules become subject to whim not reason.

And make no mistake, if the Obama administration folds on this deadline the whole logic of Obamacare crashes and burns. If there is no penalty for non-enrollment then there is an incentive for each person to wait until he or she gets sick before buying health insurance. To participate on an Obamacare exchange an insurance company must accept whoever wants to buy a plan. Insuring sick people at the point of sale is no longer insurance since every purchaser needs the service immediately. For Obamacare to work as designed, however, the law and its insurance company partners need a majority of people paying for benefits only a minority will access.

That’s the real reason the Obama administration won’t delay the March 31 enrollment deadline. It can’t afford to.