My must read of the day is "Obamacare headaches: More than the website," in Politico:
President Barack Obama has said it again and again: Obamacare is more than just a website. And he’s right — the Affordable Care Act’s benefits aren’t limited to healthcare.gov.
Neither are its hangups.
The range of issues and potential issues runs the gamut, from the truly glitchy — the small and likely solvable — to much more serious threats to the viability of the health exchanges at the heart of Obamacare.
White House officials insist all will work once the website is up, running and easy to use. But the intensity of the national focus on the website has saved them from having to answer questions about other potentially damaging issues that have arisen either outside the virtual confines of healthcare.gov or in conjunction with troubled portal.
Mostly, those problems are a matter of pocketbooks and politics.
The administration is facing two big problems that will likely balloon soon:
1) Getting young healthy enrollees
"Young Invincibles" (healthy people between the ages of 18-35) must sign up. Those young people pay the bills for the elderly and people with preexisting conditions. If they don’t sign up, the law doesn’t work.
It always seemed optimistic to expect them to sign up for the Affordable Care Act, rather than pay the much less expensive fine, but young people aren’t very patient with technology. Problems with the website increase the chances that they won’t be signing up at all. They surely won’t take extra measures to register in person or via mail or by phone for insurance that they don’t really want.
If an individual does not pay the penalty, he will receive a notice from the IRS, but according to the Obamacare legislation, "Individuals who fail to pay the penalty will not be subject to any criminal prosecution or penalty for such failure. The secretary of treasury cannot file notice of lien or file a levy on any property for a taxpayer who does not pay the penalty."
So why would young people buy this insurance? They’d likely take the fine out of tax returns, but that’s if the person has a tax return—and if the tax bill is large enough to cover the penalty.
2) Will the Individual Mandate be delayed?
Delaying the individual mandate isn’t a freestanding decision. If it is going to be delayed beyond a few weeks, the benefits of the law have to be delayed as well.
If people know they don’t have to sign up for Obamacare for a while, and then don’t, only individuals who need insurance immediately will register for it. That places the burden of paying for the services they use on insurance companies. That won’t be sustainable for very long. So either the administration agrees to delay the benefits along with the mandate, or the American insurance market is going to take a bad, bad hit.
The administration surely knows that. Lawmakers surely know that. It might not be what they announce on television, but they must know that delaying benefits would be the discussion that follows a decision to delay the mandate.